I hesitate to try and explain who Jack Kerouac is because he is my hero. I feel I’d never be able to do justice to the person he was. I usually just tell people to read his work, because that’s how I’ve grown to understand him. Like many of us, he was a complicated man, full of intricacies. He was brilliant, but incredibly sad. Tortured, trying to find purpose in his own life.
I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac at a pivotal moment in my life, the summer before my freshman year of college. My faded yellow copy of the novel is well-loved. That summer I carried the book with me everywhere, like a trusty companion. I read it in coffee shops, under the shade of trees, or on my breaks at work. I carefully underlined my favorite lines in pen.
In the novel, after the main character Sal Paradise has completed his first cross county journey from New York to San Francisco, he’s headed back home. He says,
“In inky night we cross New Mexico; at gray dawn it was Dalhart, Texas; in the bleak Sunday afternoon we rode through one Oklahoma flat-town after another; at night fall it was Kansas. The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.”
The first time I read this line, I found it funny, why October? How was it different from other months? I mean I knew why it was my favorite month, because the leaves change colors, scary movies are on TV, and it’s my birthday month. Why did Kerouac like the month? It puzzled me, but I knew there must be something more to it.
The line has rattled around my brain for years, and now as October is upon Laramie, I was inspired the crack open the book. I re-read the chapter with this line, and it was suddenly clear what it meant. Kerouac was creating a scene, the mood for the closing moments of Sal’s journey.
While hitching home, Sal meets an old man, who he refers to as a ghost. The man is hopelessly lost, claiming he’s headed to Canada, when he’s on a road traveling East to West. Sal leaves the old man on the side of the road where he had found him, where he would likely stay for years to come. Sal has a place to go home to, but he still feels as lost as the ghost on the side of the road.
October is a season of contradictions. There’s the relief of staying in bed on a Sunday morning, sipping on a warm cup of coffee while it’s cloudy outside. There’s the anticipation for all of the holidays yet to come and the family you will see.
Yet there’s an eeriness and emptiness that’s hard to pinpoint. The sound of golden leaves rustling down the sidewalk. The bite in the air when you step outside and frigid wind hits your cheeks. Chills run down your spine as you brave the walk back to your car in the clear night air.
“Everybody goes home in October.”
With only a few simple words, Kerouac elicits an emotion we’ve all known, but have never been able to explain. We read in an attempt to feel less alone, to know that someone else has experienced or felt the same things we have. This line found me before I ever knew I would need it. This October, I am home, but that hasn’t kept me from feeling lost. I find comfort in the fact that the same questions I have about our world, were the same ones Kerouac wrote about.
Jack Kerouac died on October 21, 1969, at 47 years old of an abdominal hemorrhage likely caused by his alcoholism. My birthday is October 22, 1996. I still find it a little uncanny that his death date and my birthday are so close, and the year numbers are simply switched. Do I think I’m the reincarnation of Kerouac’s soul? I won’t rule out the possibility, but it’s unlikely. I do believe there can be a connection between people, spread out across time and space, that’s sewn together with writing.
Kerouac is a ghost to me, but that doesn’t make the influence he’s had on my life any less real. His stories are a shadow of the person he was. An echo of the past I’ll never know, but still feel in the air today.