Be Crazy Dumbsaint of the Mind to Write Like a Pro

Checklist — Writers on Writing 3 (Jack Kerouac) from Belief & Technique for Modern Prose

Six writers on the craft of writing and their writing processes: From reading the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing three times to the necessity of ‘being crazy dumbsaint of the mind’, they explain the homework we have to do to fine-tune our writing skills.. In another post of this six-part series, today, we have Jack Kerouac, the poster-boy of the Beat Generation, whose Belief & Technique for Modern Prose is more of a meditation on writing than tips and techniques to improve writing skills.

📚 Contents

• Jack Kerouac’s List of 30 Beliefs and Techniques for Writing and Life
• On the Road
• The Beat Generation
• Definitions
• Bottom Line
  
• Related Posts on This Blog
• Useful Links
• Books by Jack Kerouac
  
• Addendum
  

Jack Kerouac’s List of 30 Beliefs and Techniques for Writing and Life

To be crazy dumbsaint of the mind is completely indulging your own mind in all its weirdness and approaching your experience with a sort of childlike (crazy, dumb, saintlike) wonder

 

1. Checklist — Writers on Writing 1 (John Steinbeck)
2. Checklist — Writers on Writing 2 (David Ogilvy)

On the Road

In the late Forties and early Fifties, the two Americas found a commonality in two individuals who went on to bring about revolution — and they drove through the entire continent. Che Guevara was one of them. Around 1951-52, he rode across South America for nine months on his legendary Norton 500cc motorcycle with his friend Alberto Granada. Earlier he had had a solo-ride all across Argentina. Love him or hate him, Guevara will remain one of the true revolutionaries in the world. His theories on guerilla warfare has inspired and will continue to inspire countless people fighting for the right to self-determination. 

The other person was Jack Kerouac a.k.a Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, the novelist, Beatnik, cultural icon, and the master of spontaneous prose . He took a longer trip all around North America, which lasted for nearly three years, from 1947 to 50 to be precise. He was literally on the road while, just as any Beatniks, he was seeking to find, as one observer* put it: ‘America, visions, freedom, love, happiness, and, in a lot of ways, the meaning of life.’ (* Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ Trip, Roadtripper)

It took him only three weeks to write On the Road. Some critics have been harsh on Kerouac. Once in a TV show, his contemporary, Truman Capote had reportedly said: ‘That’s not writing; that’s just typewriting.’ There is really no need to defend but I’d say Capote, who was much more into new-journalism form of writing, must have not liked Kerouac’s poetic-spiritualistic and spontaneous style. Maybe Capote was also jealous because Kerouac’s roman à clef was a success; who knows! A well-known writer like John Updike had admitted in public forum that he had spewed vitriol on Kerouac out of jealousy.

Meanwhile, I like Capote for the style he and writers like Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Hunter S Thompson, and others have popularised: New Journalism. Merriam-Webster defines it as: ‘the genre combines journalistic research with the techniques of fiction writing in the reporting of stories about real-life events’. 

The Beat Generation

I have found the essence of art and literature in the Beat Generation. For the uninitiated, Amiri Baraka expressed it most succinctly: ‘The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.’ 

I came across Allen Ginsberg first around 2009 while I was researching poetry, and further the Beat Generation has completely changed my worldview. They have also influenced me so much so that I cannot digest literature that is created for the sake of art and poetry that is heirang-leiraang in nature. They have also changed how I understand pop culture in general. The Beatniks have also provided a context to understand the world. Well, that is just my personal preferences and understanding.

We understand the world in our own ways. The focus must be on how much we can understand rather than how we understand. 

Definitions

‘The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.’ - Amiri Baraka

Do you have any favourite novels or poems written by the Beatniks? Do share it.

Bottom Line

Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears...

- On the Road, Jack Kerouac

It is said that Kerouac came up with his Belief & Technique for Modern Prose after Ginsberg and Burroughs, another two major figures of the Beat generation, challenged him to create his methodology of writing. This is also very different from the Checklists — Writers on Writing Process in the series. You can also refer to A Close Reading of Jack Kerouac’s Advice to Writers by Emily Temple on Literary Hub if you find it hard to understand these beliefs and techniques of writing, but which has spellings like yr and is full of neologisms.

Temple explains what it means to Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind: ‘[Y]ou should completely indulge your own mind in all its weirdness, and that you should approach your experience with a sort of childlike (crazy, dumb, saintlike) wonder.’

More than the specific style, as we have been observing in/from each Checklist in the series, there are many takeaways from the Belief & Technique for Modern Prose. Kerouac’s list is more of a philosophy on what and how we write than mere tips and techniques on how to improve writing. It is a meditation on writing. If you are into improvisational prose, you will love this Checklist more! 

Two of my random favourites are point 8: Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind; and point 24: No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge. 

Which ones are your favourite?

Related Posts on This Blog

• Down & Out: Beat Generation 101: An introduction to the Beat Generation
• The Essential Kerouac: An introduction to Jack Kerouac
• ginsberg-gi amerika: A translation of Allen Ginsberg’s America in Meiteilon 
• ‘On the Road’: An Illustrated Scroll: A snippet of Paul Roger’s illustrated version of On the Road
• The Best of the Beat: A selection of book titles, a few by the Beatniks, a few on them and by others who have been bracketed under the Beat Generation
  

Useful Links

• Five Ways the Beat Generation Transformed Pop Culture | AnOther
• Four Interactive Maps Immortalize the Road Trips That Inspired Jack Kerouac’s On the Road | Open Culture
• Allen Ginsberg’s Definition of the Beat Generation | Literary Hub
• A Close Reading of Jack Kerouac’s Advice to Writers | Literary Hub
• How the Beat Generation Became “Beatniks” | JStor Daily

Books by Jack Kerouac

(in a random order)

• On the Road: The Original Scroll
• Satori in Paris and Pic
• Big Sur
• Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, Big Sur 
• Lonesome Traveler
• The Subterraneans
• Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three
• Desolation Angels
• Maggie Cassidy 
• The Haunted Life
• Mexico City Blues
• Lonesome Traveler, the Dharma Bums and on the Road (Jack Kerouac Collection Set.)
• The Town and the City
• The Sea is My Brother: The Lost Novel 
• And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks 
• Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha
• Tristessa 
• Book of Blues 
• The Portable Jack Kerouac
• Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems 
• Doctor Sax
• The Dharma Bums 
• Vanity of Duluoz
• Visions of Cody 
• Book of Haikus
• Pic 

Individual book covers from Amazon

 Checklist — Writers on Writing Series:   John Steinbeck - Six tips on writing   David Ogilvy - 10 tips on writing   Jack Kerouac - List of 30 beliefs and techniques for prose and life   Ezra Pound - List of the six types of writers and two rules for forming an opinion   Henry Miller - 11 commandments of writing and daily creative routine   Kurt Vonnegut - How to Write with Style: 8 Keys to the Power of the Written Word 

Addendum

Read this blog in different languages!

A few weeks ago, a North Indian friend who is a bureau chief of a leading Hindi daily told me that he cannot read my blog half-jokingly because it is written in English. So I have added a translation widget, which you can see it here in the sidebar. It allows the translation of the blog in 108 languages. This means my blog is available in 108 languages! Cool!

Today I was just trying it out and found it interesting to see my blog in different languages though I can understand only two: English, obviously, a bit of Hindi. I can also read Bengali and Marathi; the latter because it is in Devanagari script that is also used in Hindi, but I don't understand these languages. 

So, I took the screenshot of the footer menu in 24 languages to check the appearances. It is fun! It is also amusing to note that in Marathi, Home is written as ghar, which is literally home but I have never heard the word used in the context of a website menu. 

Finally, I have added Meiteilon/Manipuri in the graphic, because again I wanted to check how it looks. However, Meiteilon is not available in Google Translate, which is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google and is available in 108 languages.

As of April 2021, another 127 languages are in development stage and this includes Meiteilon/Manipuri plus one more which has been petitioned to be added in Google Translate.     

This blog is available in 108 languages! You can use the Read-this-Blog-in-Your-Language dropdown sub-menu in the sidebar to read this blog in any available language of your choice.