A Momentary Taste of Being

From very early on in the novel: "Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me." Kerouac argued that his novel was not an encouragement to much of what followed him, but rather a quest, a quest for a kind of religious salvation.

from Book of Sketches Jack Kerouac   Ah Neal--the shaggy whiteface cows are arranged in stooped   dejected feed, necks   bent, upon the earth   that has a several mood under several   skies & openings--Ah   the sad dry Land ground   that's open between grasses whip't bald by the endless Winds--   the clouds are bunched up on the Divide of the horizon, are shining   upon they city--the little fences are lonely-- The commentary made in a journal entry on an earlier passage works as well for this: There is about this a poetic naivete that is endearing because it is undemanding. The lines break where the lines break without much thought of rule or order or consequence or meaning or rhythm or any of the other guiding lights of well-considered poetry--and yet because it lacks these almost by design, it has an kind of swinging, free and open rhythm--a movement all its own and not replicable without trying and trying ...