I’m posting this review much later than I ever intended — apologies to the author! But sometimes that’s how life goes, and sometimes a book comes along at just the right time. In my wandering pack of experiences, I find they often do.
Enter The Beat Handbook by Rick Dale. Subtitled 100 Days of Kerouactions, the author reminds us that even in these times of political showdowns with lots of folks worried about losing their rights and freedoms or complaining that they’ve never had any, freedom is right out your back door.
Designed as a free-living companion book, Dale asks the daily question “What would Jack do? (That is, Jack Kerouac, for you Beat novices.) His advice, drawn mainly from Kerouac’s signature novels, On the Road and Dharma Bums, and sprinkled with Zen-Buddhist mysticism and references to other mystics, pivots from the practical to the spiritual and back again.
One day the author recommends following what some of us call our gut instincts and others call our true selves, quieting those inner voices that hold us back from action. A few days later he advises making “slumgullion,” a mixture of home fries and scrambled eggs. (Oh yes I tried it! Throw some green pepper in there for a little kick!)
Advice follows on hitchhiking, food to take with you on the road, gift-giving from the heart, breaking the law from time to time, meditation on the go, taking chances, and freeing oneself from the consumerist impulse. The list goes on.
My personal favorite is the advice to drive over the speed limit enough that a whole trip averages an illegal speed — I AM a lead-foot, after all, and nothing recalls Kerouac’s writing to my mind more than to picture Dean Moriarty at the wheel with his foot to the floor weaving around slow-poke half-dead travelers on a mountain road. No mountains in Michigan, but I can approximate!
Which brings us to another of the main elements in The Beat Handbook. This is, throughout, a tribute to Jack Kerouac and a corresponding call to imagine a more free existence than the ones most of us live.
Some folks will object to many of the suggestions found inside, but they’ll also be missing the point. It’s a point Rick Dale makes admirably, even crucially, for our time.
I see it like this: Even Sal (who is really Jack) walks away from Dean and the road life. This walking away is a necessary element, a balance to Dean’s complete inability to act as a responsible adult. But Sal brings with him the memory of those wild rides and along with those memories something vital, something our safety-first culture tends to miss.
My advice: pick up a copy and build some of your own Beat memories to live on before it’s too late. Find a copy of On the Road while you’re at it, and don’t forget to “go go go!”
(The Beat Handbook is available on Amazon. You can check out Rick Dale’s online presence at The Daily Beat and Words Are My Drug of Choice. He also plays in a bluegrass band, The NitPickers. Check him out, and let him know you found him here!)
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