This novel is jack kerouac’s final entry in what
he called “The Duluoz Legend,” his fictional autobiography. The book is an account of much of
the material Kerouac had previously covered in his
first novel, The town and tHe city. Yet this revised account takes on a different tone. Vanity of
Duluoz is considered one of Kerouac’s most accessible novels because of his self-described attempt
to write plainly and to use normal punctuation (he
somewhat bitterly chooses to eliminate his characteristic dash-style of punctuation). The book also
covers aspects of the Kerouac’s life that are calculated to interest his readers, in particular the Columbia years and the scene around Joan Vollmer’s
apartment at the time of the famous murder of
Dave Kammerer by Lucien Carr. Kerouac’s letters
to his agent at the time of the writing of this book
show that he was under severe financial pressure
for it to be a success, and perhaps this is why he
finally ignored the plea of Carr, who had for years
asked him not to discuss Kammerer’s death. Still,
the book succeeds on its own terms, establishing a
ruthless truthfulness and fullness of disclosure that
is the trademark of Kerouac’s best work.
Kerouac addresses the book to his third wife,
Stella Sampas, for one of reasons that he wrote on
tHe road—to explain to his wife, Joan Haverty in
the case of On the Road, how he had come to be
who he was. It is also worth noting that Kerouac
wrote to Stella throughout the years that are covered in the book, although it would be many years
before he would marry and move back to Lowell
with her. The word vanity seems to be hanging before Kerouac as he writes the book. He points out
to Stella that all his success as a writer has really
brought him more trouble than happiness.
Jack Duluoz is Kerouac’s persona again, and
his decision to attend Columbia costs his father his
job with Calloway printers in Lowell, which had offered him a promotion if Duluoz played football for
the Jesuits at Boston College. Accordingly, in the
years to come, Duluoz feels pressure to justify his
decision. He spends a year at Horace Mann prep
school to make up his high school deficiencies.
There his fellow football players, who are mostly
from working-class backgrounds, are suspicious
of his friendship with the nonathletic, rich Jewish
students who comprise the majority of the student
body. Duluoz’s city friends introduce him to literature, avant-garde film, and jazz. He skips classes to
study New York City. The original title of the book
was “The Adventurous Education of Jack Duluoz,”
and Duluoz recommends letting “a kid learn his
own way, see what happens.” Kerouac’s nickname
was “Memory Babe,” and he demonstrates a facility
for recalling events and details of his teenage years,
particularly his experiences in New York.
War will disrupt what appears to be a clear
path to success as a football player and a scholar
at Columbia: Duluoz does play the 1940 season at
Columbia. However, a spectacular run-back makes
him overconfident in a game against St. Benedict,
and he has his leg broken on the next play, foolishly fielding an unreturnable punt. The broken
leg gives him the leisure to study, and he immerses
himself in the works of the writer who will most
influence him in his early years—Thomas Wolfe.
Late one night, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in
a blizzard, he actually sees Wolfe stride past him,
deep in meditation, not noticing Duluoz.
Duluoz returns to Columbia for this sophomore year, and his sense of fatalism is reinforced
by Lu Libble’s (based on coach Lou Little) obvious
intentions to keep Duluoz benched, playing lesser
players in his place. Duluoz walks away from the
team with a resolution to “go after being a writer,
tell the truth,” and to “go into the Thomas Wolfe
darkness” of America. He returns to Hartford and
his disappointed father, takes a job at a gas station, and rents a typewriter. His father’s job ends
in New Haven, and the family returns to Lowell,
where Duluoz has the appearance of a returning prodigal son. He takes a job as a sportswriter
for the Lowell Sun and spends his afternoons there
writing a Joyce-influenced novel. In the evenings,
he embarks on a program of self-education, working through H. G. Wells’s Outline of History and
the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He
fights with his father. His mother tells him not to
listen to his father and that his father is only afraid
that Duluoz might succeed in life by following his
own path. Duluoz claims for the first time that he
will support his mother no matter what comes. He
quits the sports-writing job and goes South, where
he works a construction job on the military’s new
Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., in Virginia.
War broke out in December, and Duluoz inevitably
enlists—in the marines—but he ends up signing on
with the merchant marines as a scullion, bound for
the North Pole. Kerouac’s most important friend
of his youth, Sebastian “Sammy” Sampas, brother
of Stella, is portrayed here as Sabbas “Sabby” Savakis. Sabby tries to sign on with him, but Duluoz
tells him he wants to be on his own. Duluoz laments that if Sabby had been able to sail with him,
it might have changed his fate and saved his life.
Sabby is later killed on the beach at Anzio. Much
of the book quotes from Kerouac’s sea diary on
board the ship, which he interrupts with wry, parenthetical comments about the style of his prose.
Kerouac, at the time he wrote the novel, disliked
communism, but in spite of the fact that he deplored anti-Vietnam war protesters, this book has
a strong antiwar message. He is in the ship’s mess,
cooking 2,000 strips of bacon for the crew, when
he hears a depth-charge attack against a German
submarine. Instead of feeling fear, he thinks of the
German boy on the submarine who is doing the
same thing he is—cooking breakfast.
He arrives back home to find a telegram from
Lu Libble, telling him it is time to come back and
play football for Columbia. Duluoz does, on the
condition that he gets to play and that Libble
help his father get a job. Neither happens, and
Duluoz implies that Libble keeps him benched
in the Army game because the mob has a fix on
the outcome. While listening to Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony on the radio in his dorm room, he decides to quit football. Duluoz returns to Lowell,
gets sick with the German measles, and spends
his time hand-printing a novel entitled “The Sea
is My Brother.” After recovering, he reports to the
navy for duty, flunks his Naval Air Force Test, and
is sent to boot camp.
Duluoz’s problem with the navy was that
he could not submit to the arbitrary discipline of
his superiors. In the middle of the daily drills, he
throws his gun down and walks off the field. They
find him in the library. Although it was determined
after psychiatric testing that he had the highest IQ
of any soldier in the history of the Newport Navy
Base, he is shipped off to the “nuthouse.” Duluoz
explains to no avail that he was perfectly willing to serve his country in the merchant marine.
In the psychiatric ward, he meets “Big Slim” from
Louisiana, a man whose ambition from childhood
was to become a hobo. Naturally, Duluoz hits it
off with him. Duluoz is visited by his father, who
tells him that he did the right thing in throwing
down his rifle. Sabby also visits him, eyes big with
tears, not understanding Duluoz’s actions. This is
the last time that he sees Sabby. The navy discovers that Duluoz and Slim have hidden away knives
to attempt an escape and sends them both, straight
jacketed, to Bethesda Naval Hospital. There they
are thrown in with seriously mentally ill patients.
Duluoz tells the doctors that he constitutionally is
incapable of submitting to discipline. They discharge
him honorably but make him sign an affidavit that
he will make no claims on the military thereafter.
Kerouac now regrets that he felt compelled
to balk the navy and even admits that he might
have learned something useful in the service—
something more useful, he says, than writing. He
begins his “adventurous education” anew, going
to live with his parents who now reside in Ozone
Park in New York City. Big Slim visits and with
Duluoz’s father they spend a day at the horse races
and a night drinking. This is the last time he sees
Big Slim. Duluoz makes good on his promise to
the navy psychiatrists and signs on a merchantmarine ship. While making this voyage, he reads
John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga and comes up
with the idea to write his own saga of interconnected books. The chief mate has it in for Duluoz,
and assigns him to life-threatening duties that enraged the other crew members. Duluoz compares
his situation to Billy Budd. After the ship docks in
Liverpool he sees enough of the extreme poverty
of the city and buys a train ticket to London on a
two-day pass.
Duluoz manages to visit London during a lull
in the German air war. He visits museums and hears
the symphony at the Royal Albert Hall. The day
before sailing, he imagines fully the idea of “The
Duluoz Legend”—“a lifetime of writing about what
I’d seen with my own eyes.” Back in Brooklyn, he
continues a romance with Johnnie (based on Edie
Parker). Johnnie lived with a Barnard journalism
student named June (based on Joan Burroughs)
whose Columbia-adjacent apartment was the center of a group of bohemians. Here begins a long account of the events that are based on Lucien Carr’s
relationship with Dave Kammerer. Here Carr is
Claude de Maubris, and Kammerer is Franz Mueller.
Kerouac had never previously published his version
of the famous killing that signaled the beginning of
the Beat Generation. Here he gives a detailed account of the older man Mueller stalking the beautiful, blond Claude and of Claude’s bemused response
to Mueller that finally turned to desperation and
murderous rage. For libel reasons, Kerouac has william s. burroughs, Kammerer, Carr, and Kells
Elvins all come from New Orleans, instead of St.
Louis. Kerouac writes that this “clique was the most
evil and intelligent buncha bastards and shits in
America but had to admire in my admiring youth.”
Kerouac also writes a detailed portrait of Burroughs
and of the beginning of their long friendship. It is
as close as Kerouac ever came to writing his longpromised novel based on Burroughs.
This book gives the most detailed account
of the Carr/Kammerer murder that was written
by any of the Beats, and it is the basis of most of
the accounts that are found in other books. It is a
very literary retelling (Duluoz says of Claude and
Mueller that their past was “exactly like Rimbaud
and Verlaine”), almost as if the real-life story were
scripted to be included one day as the first installment in the legend of the Beats. Mueller follows
Claude from school to school and from city to city.
At one point, Claude is so depressed by Mueller’s
pursuit and his own confused sexuality that he attempts suicide by sticking his head in a gas oven—
only to be saved at the last instant by Mueller. The
pursuit continues in New York, where Claude attends Columbia and Mueller befriends Claude’s
friends. Duluoz and Claude plot to shake Mueller
for good by shipping out to France on a merchantmarine ship. The trip to France falls through when
the first mate of the ship runs off most of the crew,
including Duluoz and Claude. Claude awakens
Duluoz at six the next morning, saying that he has
“disposed of the old man last night.” The motive
was self-defense. According to Claude, Mueller
said that he would kill him if he could not have
him. Claude stabbed him 12 times with his Boy
Scout knife. Claude weighted the body and submerged it in the river. At some point earlier that
morning, he found Will Hubbard, based on Burroughs, who advised Claude to get a good lawyer
and turn himself in, which he planned to do. But
first, Claude and Duluoz dispose of the evidence
and go on a two-day drunk in Manhattan for one
last time before, as Claude believes, he goes to
the electric chair. After Claude turns himself in,
Duluoz is arrested as an accessory to murder. The
case immediately makes the newspapers. Duluoz is
put in a cell with Mafia men who are being held as
material witnesses, and one by one these hardened
criminals try to take him into their confidence to
find out if Claude is a homosexual. If his friends,
including Duluoz, do not testify that Claude is heterosexual, he is almost certain to be convicted of
murder, rather than manslaughter, for which he
would receive only a two-year sentence. Duluoz
is bailed out by Johnnie’s mother (Duluoz’s father
had angrily refused bail money), and in return
he marries Johnnie. Duluoz’s arresting detective
was the best man, bought them several rounds of
drinks, and escorted Duluoz back to jail. Duluoz’s
summary comment on the murder is that Mueller
got what he deserved for threatening Claude.
To pay back Johnnie’s mother the bail money,
Duluoz moves with his wife to Detroit where his
father-in-law finds him an easy, well-paying job in a
ball-bearing factory. He works for two months until
the money is repaid and then goes to New York
to ship out. Aboard the S.S. Robert Treat Pain, the
bosun makes Duluoz’s life miserable by referring to
him as a pretty boy, and Duluoz—still sensitive to
the issues of sexuality raised in the Claude/Mueller
affair—suspects the man’s hatred of him as some
kind of homosexual infatuation. He jumps ship in
Norfolk, Virginia, and heads back to the Columbia
campus, where he dedicates himself to becoming a
serious writer. After Benzedrine use lands him in
the hospital, he rejects his Beat friends. This is the
beginning of Duluoz’s ambition to explore America and signals his break from New York. The final
chapters of the book focus on the death of Duluoz’s
father, Duluoz’s vow to support his mother, and the
writing of a novel. His biggest “vanity” is revealed
as his ambition to be a great writer.
An excellent account of Kerouac’s writing of
Vanity of Duluoz appears in Ellis Amburn’s Subterranean Kerouac. Amburn was Kerouac’s editor for
desolation anGels and Vanity of Duluoz, which
is dedicated to Kerouac’s wife Stella and to Amburn. Amburn says that it was his idea that Kerouac address the book to his wife and that this
helped him find a form and a voice for the novel.
Kerouac completed the novel in 10 marathon sessions at the typewriter. Amburn was disappointed
by the book’s sexist and racist statements. The
book was poorly reviewed, with the notable exception of john clellon holmes’s review, but it has
since become a classic example of Kerouac’s misanthropy and bitterness at the end of his life. Kerouac’s portrait of Ginsberg as Irwin Garden seems
particularly harsh. Yet, the book is still a tour de
force of memory.
Bibliography
Amburn, Ellis. Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of
Jack Kerouac. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Rob Johnson