The Thousands

Someone dug up Jack Kerouac’s unpublished first novel, bundled it up with Kerouac miscellany and sent it to the printers. It’s called The Sea is My Brother and it follows two Kerouac-ish men who go on a Kerouac-ish adventure. This time, it’s on a boat!

You know exactly what you’re getting into here: drink, smoke, sex, jazz, pretentious conversations and unusually close male friendships. Feel free to substitute On The Road’s free spirit Dean Moriarty for free spirit Wesley Martin; his man-crush sidekick Sal Paradise for man-crush sidekick Bill Everhart. But the content hardly matters here. Kerouac’s draw card is the jazzy energy that bubbles underneath his sentences. There is enough verve here to enliven the otherwise turgid debates about socialism and fascism, idealism and realism. I think it has something to do with the liberal use of commas.

While The Sea is My Brother still hums with Kerouac’s syncopated prose, it comes across as sloppy – the literary equivalent of a demo tape. The rhythm is there but Kerouac occasionally hits a wrong note, straying off key with spots of dag and pretense. See it as a milestone in the life of an author who eventually matured and went on to write more or less the same shit.