SOURCE: “Kerouac's The Subterraneans: A Study of ‘Romantic Primitivism’,” in Melus, Vol. 19, No. 3, fall, 1994, pp. 107-23.

In the following essay, Panish argues that Kerouac unwittingly used white stereotypes of African-Americans to achieve intertextuality with black jazz culture in The Subterraneans.

In a review of Jack Kerouac's 1958 novel, The Subterraneans, poet/critic Kenneth Rexroth said “The story is all about jazz and Negroes. Now there are two things Jack knows nothing about—jazz and Negroes” (Nicosia 568). Whatever the source of Rexroth's disdain for Kerouac's novel, this criticism of The Subterraneans hits close to the mark.¹ Kerouac's romanticized depictions of and references to African Americans (as well as other racial minorities—American Indians and Mexican-Americans) betray his essential lack of understanding of African American culture and the African American social experience. That is, Kerouac's novelistic attitude toward racial minorities in The Subterraneans (and elsewhere) is similar to the stance of...