Inscriptions: Terror and beauty in Big Sur

Before Jack Kerouac slid into complete alcoholic psychosis, he spent a month transcribing the sounds of the Pacific Ocean. In an attempt to dry out, he hid away at his friend’s cabin in Big Sur. He would climb down the cliff the cabin rested on, sit on the beach and sound out the noises the waves made in a notebook. He later published poems that included these transcriptions: 

“Shoo — Shaw — Shirsh”

“Go on die rock light”

“You billion yeared”

“Rock knocker”

“Big Sur” by Jack Kerouac includes these poems, chronicling his slow descent into insanity. While he is troubled by unwanted fame and dealing with alcoholism at the beginning of the novel, he still manages to keep a cheery tone and remain functional. He spends a good majority of the novel painting a beautiful image of the paradisiacal wildlife and nature around his cabin. But by the end, Kerouac is so wrought with anxiety and confusion that it seems impossible he could live through it and remain coherent enough to capture it in writing. What results is an unnerving quality that makes you want to tuck it away in your closet instead of displaying it on your bookshelf. 

The primary question the novel begs you to ask is: “Oh my god, how did it get this bad?” Unfortunately for Kerouac, there was even less understanding of psychiatry in the 1950s than there is today. In writing, the only medical term he uses is “alcoholic,” and he suggests that his alcoholism might be his way of treating a deeper psychiatric disorder, forcing the reader to consider the nature of Kerouac’s anguish outside of a modern psychiatric lens. 

I believe you can begin to chisel away at the question of what drove Kerouac’s descent into madness by linking it to his study of the ocean.. He had spent his entire life seeking spiritual truth, sacrificing his health and sanity, hopping trains across the United States. He tried Catholicism, Buddhism and psychedelics in his quest to understand the universe. Finally, he found himself battered from years of alcoholism and vagrancy — nowhere closer to the truth — listening to the waves in some desperate plea to understand the universe. 

When interpolating the sea sounds failed to reveal anything, Kerouac began to hallucinate because he had already read, seen, heard and drank anything he possibly could conceive to seek the truth. The bats, the UFO and the vulture people all serve as portals for Kerouac’s sick mind to peer into an imagined reality. 

Sometimes an obsession with discovering ultimate truth can spring from a deep dissatisfaction with everyday reality. In the case of Kerouac, this obsession increased the misery of his everyday existence, which in turn, fed his obsession. Maybe this explanation is just as lazy as calling Kerouac manic depressive and scrubbing his memory clean in an institution with insulin shock treatments — that’s actually what they did back then — but I think this model is helpful because it leads to another question: “Why was Jack Kerouac so obsessed with finding the truth?” 

Maybe I should ask myself the same thing. Last semester, I visited Big Sur. I stared off into the same sunset Kerouac saw shrouded in nightmare and listened to the same waves he transcribed. My friend told me that Big Sur was one of the only places in the United States where you can see the “green flash.” He told me, “As the last of the sun melted into the sea, some miracle of light turned the entire sky bright green.” 

So, we sat and waited. After the sun disappeared and the stars poked their way through tufts of clouds, we realized we had missed the green flash, or the conditions weren’t right, or it wasn’t real. I was deeply disappointed, whereas my friend couldn’t care less. The night sky was beautiful, we had a delicious meal of potatoes, sausage and carrots cooked in aluminum foil, and my other friend was yammering about something hilarious that I can no longer remember.

I should have been perfectly content, but I wanted to see the sky turn green, or the sun peel itself away to reveal a fiery cross, or a pitch-black ceiling panel fall out of the sky to reveal an embarrassed alien onlooker. 

I often approach a book looking for some hidden image in the text, which strips the surface of the story away from the page and reveals a clever collage of symbols.

I can’t understand Kerouac’s dissatisfaction through mine, or my dissatisfaction through Kerouac’s perspective, but I can understand the connection between the two, which has made me realize the vicious cycle that led Kerouac to the end of “Big Sur” is in no way unique to him. Of course, there is value in searching for truth, but sometimes that can distract us from the beauty that is directly in front of us. Right now, I’m going to stop worrying about Jack Kerouac and what color the sky really is to finish this article and go get some sunlight.

Liam Riley PO ’26 is from East Tennessee. He likes giving book recommendations, the outdoors and shenanigans. Reach out to him if you want to help build an underground sauna in his buddy’s backyard.