I’m a bit ahead of myself this month.
Two films are due for release in October, both based on controversial coming-of-age novels: On the Road and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
‘Find my own road’
Jack Kerouac is an iconic writer synonymous with drifting adventure, so much so that the Urban Dictionary contains a reference for his name with the meaning ‘to wander aimlessly for the giddy thrill’. His most famous novel, On the Road, is a set text of the Beat Generation, a group of hedonistic Bohemians who lived a spontaneous and exuberant lifestyle.
Although based on numerous notes, it has an improvisational tone, charting a fictionalised version of a long road trip that Kerouac took across America; Sal is a thinly veiled version of Jack himself, his companion Dean a rewriting of Neal Cassady. The novel is remembered as an account of a experimental, nomadic lifestyle in which the characters seek ‘a pornographic hashish daydream in heaven’: drugs, alcohol, sex, eastern mysticism, jazz music and complete freedom from modernist capitalism.
However, Kerouac claimed that the novel ‘was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God’. Kerouac had been raised as a Catholic and believed that as a child he heard God prophesy for him a life of suffering culminating in final salvation. Therefore, despite his later flirtation with Buddhism, Christianity remained an important backdrop to his work. When asked by one interviewer why he’d never written a book about Jesus he retorted: ‘You insane phoney, all I write about is Jesus’. It has even been claimed that his coining of the term ‘Beat Generation’ referred not to their ‘upbeat’ approach, but to his hope that they would be a beatific generation who would experience a complete and perfect vision of God. For the most part, he in fact remained mired in ‘the bleakness of the mortal realm’ and caught up in his own subjectivity: ‘What’s heaven? What’s earth? All in the mind’.
‘I swear we were infinite’
Also due for release is a story about another young man caught up in his own thoughts: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. According to the American Library Association, Stephen Chbosky’s novel is one of the most frequently challenged books of this century. It has continually stirred up controversy and protest since it was published in 1999. In America, Christian parents have objected to its frank and unapologetic expose of teenage behaviour.
The novel tells the story of Charlie, an introverted onlooker confronted with the complications that adolescence brings. Charlie is unbearably honest, describing his inner emotions with a frankness that betrays his naivety. Two older students, Patrick and Sam, make it their responsibility to lead him into adult life. His teacher also begins encouraging him to read novels that include beatnik classics On the Road and Naked Lunch. Surrounded by this swirl of influences Charlie struggles to do what’s right.
The story frankly examines friendship, love and sex, drug and alcohol use, mental illness, and homosexuality, as well as suicide and grieving. Perhaps it is no wonder that people have pounced on the novel as unsuitable for a young audience. Yet its author defends the need to get these issues out in the open: ‘The more you talk about it, the more you take away its power and its mystery, and people can make much more informed and mature decisions about these things.’
‘The love we think we deserve’
Despite the questionable morality on display in the novel, there is a poignant message: ‘We accept the love we think we deserve’. Charlie learns to accept love, and to see that there are, indeed, some perks to being a wallflower. This allows him to tolerate his struggles, but it doesn’t stop him longing for answers: ‘I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what’s wrong with me’.
Compare this to Sal’s prayer in On the Road: ‘I looked up at the dark sky and prayed to God for a better life and a better chance to do something for the little people I loved’. Here is a young man on a journey calling out for meaning, hope and a way of connecting with others. It’s the same for Charlie nearly half a century later. These are desires hardwired into humanity, which we too can relate to as we travel along our own narrow road.
On the Road stars Sam Rilet (Sal Paradise) and Garrett Hedlund (Dean Moriarty). The Perks of Being a Wallflower stars Logan Lerman (Charlie), Ezra Miller (Patrick), and Emma Watson (Sam).
Rachel Helen Smith works as an events planner and freelance writer in Cambridge. More of her articles are available at http://www.rachelhelensmith.com
