Ecstatic, Unrelenting Energy
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
I’ve always loved this sentence because of its ecstatic, unrelenting energy, a rapt elation for the mad ones. There’s a myth floating in the ether that Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks, typing nonstop on a 120-foot roll of paper and, without changing a word, sold the book. Though he wrote the first draft in three weeks, he rewrote the novel many times.
“Kerouac cultivated this myth that he was this spontaneous prose man, and that everything that he ever put down was never changed, and that's not true," said Paul Marion, a Kerouac scholar who spoke to NPR. "He was really a supreme craftsman, devoted to writing and the writing process."
That’s evident in how many style techniques are used in this sentence. The high energy of this sentence comes, in part, from the length. Mary Oliver writes in A Poetry Handbook that the pentameter line, or a line with 10 syllables, most nearly matches the breath capacity of English lungs—that is, speaking in English. A sentence with more than 10 syllables, which is beyond the ordinary lung capacity, creates a feeling of abundance, grandiosity, joy, or an unstoppable force. Kerouac uses a lot of commas (eight) to break up this sentence, but by the end, the commas fall away, and the sentence becomes a headlong rush, leaving you breathless (try reading it out loud).
Kerouac injects more energy and emotion into the sentence by using repetition. The word ‘mad’ is used four times, and the word ‘burn’ three times. When I think about this sentence, these words come to mind first and fuse together. When writing a sentence like this, the question for the writer is, what words do you want emblazoned on the reader’s brain?
This is a cumulative sentence; it accumulates details that flesh out the base clause. The base clause begins the sentence, “The only people for me are the mad ones.” Everything that follows—the phrases and clauses—refers to this opening clause, giving more details about “the mad ones.”
Kerouac uses anadiplosis, the repetition of a word(s) at the end of a clause or phrase and then again at the beginning of the next clause or phrase. This technique feels like a little whirlpool, spinning around the repeated word. Here, it’s the word “ones”: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones…”
Anaphora, the repetition of a word(s) at the beginning of phrases or clauses, punctuates the word ‘mad,’ drawing attention to it: “mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” The word ‘mad’ was first introduced in the base clause, and the anaphora picks it up, heightening the emotion.
The adjectival phrase “desirous of everything at the same time” breaks the rhythm created by anaphora. After a long string of monosyllabic words, he uses two polysyllabic words—’ desirous’ and ‘everything.’ Because of this change, the ear wakes up again. The hyperbole of this phrase adds heightened emotion.
The sentence returns to the word “ones” with a relative clause and balance (the pairing of two), which creates an eloquent tone: “the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing.”
The sentence pivots away from elegance with the word ‘but’ (‘but’ always turns a sentence in a new direction) and returns to the ecstatic with the repetition of “burn, burn, burn.”
Two similes usher in imagery. The piling up of similes, one after the other, is in keeping with the feeling of joy or abundance. One simile could never be enough. “Like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding.” The next simile refers to the exploding candles, “like spiders across the stars.” This last image is unusual, veering toward the irrational. For me, that heightens the emotion, which refuses to be reined in by logical imagistic associations. Because he doesn’t use a comma separating the two similes, Kerouac creates even more breathlessness, which is absolutely fitting for this sentence.
Your Turn:
Open with the base clause--a subject and verb predicate.
Now, you’ll use anadiplosis. The word you choose to end the base clause with will begin the next clause.
Next, use anaphora. Choose a word from the base clause and include it in your first relative clause. Add two more phrases that begin with that word. (Kerouac used “mad.) Keep these two phrases short.
Add an adjectival phrase to break the rhythm created by anaphora.
Return to the word you repeated for anadiplosis.
Add “but” and repeat a word three times in a row.
Add two similes.
How did it go?
What else do you see? Feel?
Swimming in Style!
For paid subscribers, each month, we gather on Zoom for 90 minutes to write stunning sentences. A single, solitary sentence can blossom into a scene, into another scene, and soon you have a story. I’ve seen it happen many times. We are also building a really wonderful community of writers!
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Our next monthly gathering is January 25 at 11:00 PST.
At our last gathering, we tried two paragraphs, one of longing and nostalgia and another that syntactically mimics surprise. Amazing writing happened! So we’ll do paragraphs again.
Please note: I send out the Zoom link via a substack post called “Swimming in Style…” and then whatever month we meet. In this case, it will be “Swimming in Style in January.” Please look for this.
About Me:
I’ve taught “Style in Fiction,” “Word for Word,” and “Cultivating Your Prose” at the University of San Francisco and Stanford Continuing Studies since 2007. Please visit my website for all my books: ninaschuyler.com, including my novel Afterword, How to Write Stunning Sentences, and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal.
IN THIS RAVISHING WORLD:
Winner of the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature
“Powerfully beautiful and beautifully powerful, Schuyler has written exactly the book this moment needs." Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author
“A brilliantly conceived and eloquent new linked story collection.”–Jane Ciabattari, Lithub
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Rescue Dogs Before I Leave You
The dogs I bring home to you are the marked ones, the ones who have said their last prayers, the ones who go wild, wild, wild and dig up my roses, lustful for all invisible smells, the ones who were not taught not to sit, stay or come, but to dig, dig, dig like insatiable babies we never made, bursting from prison like an exodus of damaged stars.
I have a fear of overly colorful sunsets, sunsets that overly spill brazen colors into nearby clouds, sunsets that are innocent, sunsets that are ignorant, goody-two-shoes sunsets, but still darken, darken, darken into night like a heavy velvet curtain closing like a slithering snake.