Why do we walk? The much loved and erudite Adam Gopnik in the September 1, 2014 New Yorker reviewed two recent works on the subject of walking. Is it a sport? Twas a spectator sport in the 19th century among the working classes. But in his review of Gros's book he focuses on the writer's division of walking into the contemplative sort, where we walk to clear our heads, move our bodies, be out there in the world but within a social solitude--in an urban environment we walk to be alone in a world of others; and there's also the rootless walking of, say, the homeless, who walk for having been denied a place. There's in their ambling presence a threat to the comfortably destined and purposeful. Gros references the old Cynic walker, a kind of homeless hippie (in Gopnik's characterization) who leaning into the wind walks to get in the face of passersby. Gopnik also rightly hails the great strider, Walt Whitman, who hiked and rambled to experience the city and country and world, to sing its joys and rally its banners. The latter mention is contained in a note by Gopnik that few of the Frenchman's walking samples come as Americans; indeed, it is Gopnik who hails Whitman and Alfred Kasin, the great New York walker, whose 1951 book is titled "A Walker in the City."
But Gopnik begins this noting of American ambling absence by puzzling over the inclusion of Jack Kerouac, who Gopnik refers to as "the echt American driver". Yes, I have to look up "echt" as well: back in a second...okay, German origin and means "authentic and typical". Gopnik assuredly refers to the popular image of Kerouac in his most known and influential novel of 1957, On The Road. I've only read the novel once, as I was more intrigued and influenced by other works by Kerouac--much heartier fare than the tamed and straightforward structure of his most known novel and the reference I'm guessing Gopnik has in mind. Visions of Cody, Desolation Angels, Big Sur, Doctor Sax...in all of these we find our hero and narrator wandering the streets of native Lowell, the alleys of Tangiers, the sparkling lights of New York and bleary hungover dawns of San Francisco, hitchhiking along highway 1 to the forest valley central coast dwelling of friend and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin, the northwest mountain trail down from fire lookout solitude to the civilization of Seattle...Kerouac wandered! Walked and observed and mused and paused to gaze upon the fleeting of life and beauty. Furthermore, I don't even remember if Kerouac drove much at all; Neal Cassidy was the roaring driver in many scenes and chapters of many books. Kerouac was often literally and poetically in the back seat, or just along for the ride, watchful, on trains and buses and merchant ships too, the great recorder and rememberer, to lift from Ginsberg's description.
My respect for Gopnik hasn't diminished a bit, and I continue to be absorbed by and cherish his writing. But Jack Kerouac walked, paused, gazed, recorded, in the days and nights of the streets and mountains and rivers of his time, for our time, and for all time. And pretty much Neal drove.
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