On the Bum
JACK KEROUAC'S tenth book, Lonesome Traveller (Deutsch, 15s.), is a collection of jottings, diary entries and general outpourings that date from When he was writing On the Road. The field covered is Amefica east and west, Mexico, Tan- gier, Paris and London. The first half is 'spon- taneous prose' with a vengeance and presumably will be relished by all bums, beats and hobos, but to most people, even hitherto admirers, it will be exasperating and impenetrable (there is a forty-two-line sentence ending, 'How that howp howelk howel of the knavery they're meaking, ek and won't let me slepit?'). Still, there is no denying the exuberance, and Kerouac has his special, rather daunting brand of arrogance.
There are flashes, too, of real poetic brilliance in this first half. The New York night-club piece has a splendid, impressionistic, dotty-drunken quality about it. But Tangier often meant `no vibrations,' and Europe, despite Jack's French ancestry, seems to have had a subduing effect on him, cut off from America, 'the motherland of bumdom'—`the bums in England have Eng- lish accents, and it makes them seem strange.' The Newhaven customs man was suspicious; his agent (Cyrus Brooks?) lent him a fiver and spoke of a centenarian mother; he had a 'long divine sleep' in the Mapleton Hotel, and in the Morning at eleven there were 'carillons blowing' through the open window and a maid brought in a tray of breakfast.
The young Baron Salomon de Rothschild, whose letters are published in A Casual View of America (edited by Sigmund Diamond; Cresset, 21s.), was a son of the head of. the French branch of the famous, emphatically non-bum- ming, banking family. He visited America at an interesting time-1859-61, just before the out- break of the Civil War. Sophisticated and arro- gant in a very different way from Kerouac, clinical and mocking, he was not a bit overawed by what he found. Politics, social events and the world of the ballroom were his interests. America was contemplating the annexation of Mexico and Cuba. Rothschild witnessed the visit
of the Prince of Wales, the arrivals of the Great Eastern and of the first Japanese embassy. He saw Blondin cross the Niagara Falls and com- plained, even then, about overheating in houses. All in all, within the limits of Rothschild's own nature, a most fascinating pendant to the period's social history.
The energetic, shrewd, rather serious-minded Jeanne MacKenzie spent two years travelling round Australia. Her book, Australian Paradox (MacGibbon and Kee, 30s.), is the result. It has the best intentions, often of the 'even your best friends won't tell you' sort, and will probably make some hackles rise. The deliberate lack of anecdote puts it into the strictly informative rather than 'travel' class, and as a result the book will no doubt become standard background read- ing for intending emigrants. Actually Australia, by the last chapter, remains pretty well in line with the popular preconception : a land of Utopian vision and material satisfaction, mascu- line, taking life as it comes, anti-intellectual, essentially suburban-working class in values and tastes..
Three-quarters of a million British people, ac- cording to Walter Marsden's The Emigrants Guide (Sunday Times, 18s.)," have emigrated to Australia since the war. After Suez, for instance, says Jeanne MacKenzie, long queues appeared outside Australia House in London. There is room, we are told, for several thousands more, and Walter Marsden's practical, down-to-earth Guide certainly tempts one to abandon all and put in for an assisted passage. Only £20 for husband and wife combined, with any number of children under nineteen free! Here are the answers to those anxious questions about such things as what to wear, health services, cost of living and how to find jobs, not only in Aus- tralia but in 'all countries which admit intend- ing emigrants,' with the emphasis on the Commonwealth, South Africa, the US and Britain. Even the fares from Lagos and Karachi to London are given, and there is a guarded warning against the unknown complications of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act.
Korea, Mongolia, Costa Rica and El Sal- vador are all mentioned in The Emigrants Guide, though prospects in these places are ap- parently not very hopeful at present. Dutch New Guinea, understandably, is excluded. In any case, judging by the handsomely produced and illus- trated To the Mountains of the Stars (translated by Alan G. Readett; Hodder and Stoughton, 42s.), an account by L. D. Brongersma and G. F. Venema of the/ expedition they led in 1959 to the hitherto unexplored mountainous interior, one would have to get used to some strange habits if one settled with the Sibiller or Muyu tribes—rats' ribs through the nose, gourds as jockstraps, possibly cannibalism. Then there would be leeches, mosquitoes and crocodiles to contend with as well. Even a full-scale modern expedition, plus all the appurtenances of science, including helicopters, can have its dangers and hazards, as the authors reveal in their formid- ably exhaustive account of how they set about collecting information about the people, geology, plants and animals in this last 'white' patch in the map of Papua.
It is quite refreshing to turn to the homely Cornish cliffs and Atlantic surf on the beautiful jacket of Malcolm Saville's Seaside Book (Cas- sell, 15s.). Designed for young people, pleasantly written and with many pictures, it should be excellent pre-holiday reading for family visits to the sea as well as a useful guide-book for identi- fying birds, shells, coastal plants, lighthouses and so on.
RALEI9H TREVELYAN1
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