“I Didn't Punctuate It”: Locating the Tape and Text of Jack Kerouac's Visions of Cody and Doctor Sax in a Culture of Spontaneous Improvisation

Abstract

The post-war American electronic consumer revolution heralded an explosion in use of readily available recording equipment to represent a range of cultural production. Whilst new technology encouraged a quantitative increase in sound-based art, majority of practices in first post-war decade were restricted to musical production. Jack Kerouac realised tape recorder's democratic potential for capturing a range of voices previously denied ready access to mechanical reproduction. These included his own ethnic French-Canadian voice, marginalised class voice of Neal Cassady and newly emergent, economically active, female voice of Carolyn Cassady. They attain experimental literary representation in transcribed form of five consecutive days of recorded conversation, Frisco: Tape, at centre of Visions of Cody. This remains a unique tape/literary representation propelling marginalised voice into a culture of spontaneity. The use of technology by marginalised writers brings in its wake a reconsideration of compositional process by which a finished work is achieved. Michael Davidson's Ghostlier Demarcations. Modern Poetry and Material World examines implications of such literary influences as the use of pens or typewriters, kinds of paper they preferred, whether or not they liked to have in background, type of music in