What is the earth for:

I just finished reading Jack Kerouac - Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947 - 1954, a collection edited by Douglas Brinkley, and it's been really fascinating. I've been a big fan of Kerouac for a while, and reading his journals provided some insight into his character that isn't possible to glean from his already very introspective novels. The time and energy he puts into his writing and his real appreciation for the craftsmanship of writing is overwhelming, even for the reader. His desire to be accepted as a successful novelist and writer practically screams from his text, and observing his struggles with his prose and the profundity of his ideas illuminates a very different version of Kerouac than that known most famously for his miraculous transcription of On The Road, which took place in the span of three weeks (although, as featured prominently in his journals, ideas had been hashed about and characters had been developed fairly exhaustively before). Overall, I found myself continually impressed by the complexity of his writing and his thought in journal form, and couldn't help but try to remember several memorable passages. Even Kerouac's inner turmoil cannot squash his insight or dampen his genuine joy at existence -- it leaps off the pages. In retrospect a highlighter would have been handy, despite the fees I surely would have been charged for defacing a library book, but, minus said florescent writing instrument, here are some excerpts I managed to mark with a handy fold of a page:

The kind of lifetime most often observable in obituaries of respectable proportions, and indeed in the obituary sketches of most of this world's lifetimes, the kind of life that can actually be summed up in two or three paragraphs -- these lives must surely have been used as cheap coin by the deceased. When you read these obituaries, you often think, "Well at least there's a generation forthcoming from them, who might live a little more intensely." But you know the children of these people will live similar absentminded lives, and die summed up in two paragraphs. A few hollow titles, a few "public services," a medal, some property and means, a diploma for something -- that's what they leave for their children to mull over, if indeed their children are capable at all of mulling over anything in the heat of blind acquisitive days. (20)


What is the earth for -- what is the night for -- what is food & strength for -- what is man for? For joy, for joy. (345)

And another I related to on a more base level:

It's the easiest thing in the world for me to fall apart mentally and spiritually when drunk. Thus, no more -- it'll take time to stick to it, though, but I shall do so. I seem to have a poor constitution for drinking -- and a poorer one for idiocy and incoherence. (62)