''Visions of Cody'' is an experimental novel by

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian a ...

. It was written in 1951–1952, and though not published in its entirety until 1972, it had by then achieved an underground reputation. Since its first printing, ''Visions of Cody'' has been published with an introduction by

Beat Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery ( ...

poet

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

titled "The Visions of the Great Rememberer."

Origins

''Visions of Cody'' is derived from experimental spontaneous prose inserts that Kerouac added to the original manuscript of ''

On the Road ''On the Road'' is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonis ...

'' in 1951–52. Part of the novel is a fast-forward recapitulation of the events described in ''On the Road'', which was also about Kerouac and

Neal Cassady Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. He was prominently featured as himself in the "scroll" (first d ...

. When Kerouac appeared on ''

The Steve Allen Show ''The Steve Allen Show'' was an American variety show hosted by Steve Allen from June 1956 to June 1960 on NBC, from September 1961 to December 1961 on American Broadcasting Company, ABC,

'' in 1959, he secretly read from the introduction to the then-unpublished ''Visions of Cody'' although he was supposedly reading from ''On The Road'', the book he was holding. Excerpts from the novel were published by New Directions in 1959 as a 120 page, signed limited-edition of 750 copies, the entire novel being 'considered unpublishable' at the time.

Book structure

The first section of the book is essentially a collection of short stream-of-consciousness essays, which Kerouac called "sketches", many simply describing elements of Duluoz's (Kerouac's) post-World War II

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

environment, from the texture and smells of a lunch counter to St. Patrick's Cathedral, or minor events like the decision to masturbate in a public restroom—all interlaced with Kerouac's internal dialogue. Along the way through these descriptions, Duluoz meanders towards a decision to go visit Cody in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. The second section consists mainly of the transcription of taped conversations between Kerouac and Cassady (and occasionally "Evelyn"—Cassady's last wife,

Carolyn Carolyn is a female given name, a variant of Caroline. Other spellings include Karolyn, Carolyne, Carolynn or Carolynne. Caroline itself is one of the feminine forms of Charles. List of Notable People *Carolyn Bennett (born 1950), Canadian pol ...

and various friends) that extended over five nights as they drank and smoked

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

. This is followed by a brief section entitled "Imitation of the Tape," a writing experiment by Kerouac in which he attempted to work from the spontaneity and speech patterns of the tape. The remainder of the book contains Kerouac's recounting of his travels with Cassady and the effect they had on their spiraling relationship.

Character key

Kerouac often based his fictional characters on friends and family.Sandison, David. ''Jack Kerouac: An Illustrated Biography.'' Chicago: Chicago Review Press. 1999

Themes and literary style

The novel is heavily focused on his perception of and relationship to

, renamed "Cody Pomeray." According to Kerouac, the book represented a vertical metaphysical study of Cassady as a character and its relationship to the general America. Continuing to experiment with the spontaneous prose method he had outlined in 1950, he aimed to find "the wild form that can grow with my wild heart". The tape recorder transcriptions injects the presence of speech into the text. The style has been described as

New Journalism New Journalism is a style of news writing and journalism, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, that uses literary techniques unconventional at the time. It is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style reminiscent of long-form non ...

fifteen years early. There are several meta passages in the book in which Kerouac in the words of Allen Ginsberg "writes about writing", at one point in French. Donald Allen states that the book seems self-consciously unfinished in order to convey 'an undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea words'.Kerouac, Jack, 'The Essentials of Spontaneous Prose' in Good Blonde and Others ed. by Donald Allen (USA: Grey Fox Press, 1993), p.73.

References

*1960. ''Visions of Cody''

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Visions Of Cody 1972 American novels Novels by Jack Kerouac Novels published posthumously McGraw-Hill books