Althouse: "I worked out an intricate mathematical thing which determines how assiduously I’m getting my novel typed and revised day after day."

May 25, 2014

"I worked out an intricate mathematical thing which determines how assiduously I’m getting my novel typed and revised day after day."

"It’s too complicated to explain, but suffice it to say that yesterday I was batting .246, and after today’s work my 'batting average' rose to .306. The point is, I’ve got to hit like a champion, I’ve got to catch up and stay with Ted Williams (currently hitting .392 in baseball)."

Wrote Jack Kerouac on June 3, 1948.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...: Narcissistic Internet Psycho says:

I am super smart and I think like Jack Kerouac writes, my thoughts are Roman Candles of semen and genius, you will have to see for yourself, you will see through the light and the sparks and my fluid. When I write comments for you to read I only want to underscore spacebar underscore spacebar underscore spacebar
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and I want your body to feel that
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you must understand that you are the Special and all the Words I can summon can never do Justice to someone as Pure as You. It would kill me if you slept with someone else you found on the internet, it would kill me straight in the meat of my heart: please do not make my Love turn with the Bad Thoughts. I can never have the Bad Thoughts as long as I know you care, and I know you care, I can feel it on the keys beneath my fingers and the ground beneath my toes. I am super smart: I know you are skittish, but let us be skittish kittens together, warm on a pile of laundry from the dryer. I wish I knew the name of your cat; I bet he or she is beautiful and fuzzy and warm. I read the comments of women on blogs and I imagine what they must look like naked.; 5/25/14, 7:32 PM
Ron said...: Ted Williams was kind of an asshole....maybe he should've stuck to short stories.; 5/25/14, 7:42 PM
traditionalguy said...: At least that challenge kept the poor man off the Road.; 5/25/14, 8:25 PM
Anonymous said...: That's great of Kerouac, a star athlete in high school, in Lowell,Mass., football player at Columbia U., to equate himself with the Kid (Ted Williams)Boston's Red Sox star player.

Williams wasn't an asshole, he was a dedicated man, a true American hero, who took off time in his baseball career to serve in Korea as a Marine fighter pilot. The asshole reputation came from his less than accommodating relationship with the sport's press.

Kerouac devoted himself to his writing much like the Kid devoted himself to the science of hitting.

This post made my day.; 5/25/14, 9:15 PM
rcommal said...: "...getting [words] typed..."

What a quaint notion.; 5/26/14, 4:47 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "What a quaint notion."

I think he was referring to his own typing, not to "getting" a typist to do it for him.

"Typist" is quaint, as a job for someone who isn't writing.

But, surely, we are still typing.; 5/26/14, 6:49 AM
Bill W. said...: Ann -

Please don't call me Shirley.

Bill W.; 5/26/14, 7:10 AM
George M. Spencer said...: "He keeps track of his daily progress—“so as not to kid myself”—on a large chart made out of the side of a cardboard packing case and set up against the wall under the nose of a mounted gazelle head. The numbers on the chart showing the daily output of words differ from 450, 575, 462, 1250, back to 512, the higher figures on days Hemingway puts in extra work so he won’t feel guilty spending the following day fishing on the Gulf Stream."

From the Paris Review interview with George Plimpton, here.; 5/26/14, 7:12 AM
Carol said...: Kerouac was supposed to be some kind of great typist. He helped type up Naked Lunch from Wm Burroughs' copious and crappy notes.; 5/26/14, 8:27 AM
Who Am Us Anyway? said...: Walking on water wasn't built in a day.; 5/26/14, 10:33 AM
cassandra lite said...: It's odd to call writing "typing"--except that that's how Truman Capote described On The Road: typing, not writing.; 5/26/14, 12:57 PM