Atop an Underwood by Jack Kerouac Page A

Columbia. I had spent the entire summer writing and studying feverishly, and wanted to keep that up rather than return to a college education interrupted by dozens of immaterial activities, such as football, N.Y.A. jobs, meal jobs, typing agencies, ghost-writing and whatnot. I left Lowell and got a job in a gas station in Hartford, Conn., away from my disconsolate and reprimanding parents.
    Curiously enough, I enjoyed my new status in life: it was peaceful to contemplate not being a Golden Boy of football, and to devote all my energies to writing. I wrote like a fiend, sending one radio script to Orson Welles which was never returned to me, even to this day. In the space of two months, I wrote about two hundred short stories.

There’s Something About a Cigar
    This is one of several plays that Kerouac wrote at Columbia in the spring of 1941. In a note to Sebastian Sampas on March 5, 1941, Kerouac told him that he was hitchhiking home for a long weekend: “So that we can get together and discuss over a banana split at Marion’s, I am bringing a one-act play I wrote this morning at 3 A.M.” Marion’s was a small store with ice cream and a pool table at 53 Martin Street in the Rosemont section of Pawtucketville.
    A little play in several acts and scenes.
    Date: March 23, 1941 Time: 1 A.M. (Date and time of writing. This is mentioned because I feel that it will be illuminating to people to know that this thing was written at one o’clock in the morning of March 23rd, 1941. Why, I don’t know. It doesn’t make any difference. As long as we get a little kick out of life, it’s all right. There’s no harm done.)
    Here in America last night, I saw an awful thing which people call a play. It was awful. If that is what the theatre has come to, then there is no hope for anyone except the cigar-smokers. Which brings me to the issue.
    Act One: Scene One: (Before the curtain is rung up, the audience should be supplied with good fat five-cent cigars. The women should at least light them and hold them in their hands; but the men must smoke them. It is essential.
    Because there’s something about a cigar. As you shall soon see.)
    Ages ago, I used to lay down in the warm sun and close my eyes. It was, of course wonderful. Like the time that I was naked, lying on my back in the grass, feeling the little insects run all over me and listening to the sound of the forest and the river. The forest and the river are just like a good cigar; they don’t make any noise to speak of. A turbulent river and a forest in the morning make a lot of noise; so does a loaded cigar. But I’m talking about normal conditions, if there is such a thing.
    The scene, then, is as of ages ago, where I used to be a fine poet. The sky is very blue, it is New England, there is a plowed field across the little stream, which slips by like beautiful blue-green oil. You can hear Time march on, not like in the movies, but like Time really does march on—a tremendous muffled roar. The doors in back of the stage should be open to let the sound of Time in on the customers. And it would be an outlet for the cigar smoke. Now we’re all set. There is a young fellow in a bathing suit sitting in the grass, smoking a cigar. His hair is wet, and he just got out of the water. He is smoking this cigar and the first thing he says in the play is this: Young Fellow : There’s something about a cigar . . . .
    (The sound of Time, the tremendous muffled roar of it all, is audible to all. If necessary, install a Time machine underneath the stage and let it reverberate in a restrained, powerful monotone. Also a few bird cheeps and lapping water. The sky is blue as hell. It is a New England sky. Blue as all hell. Now comes another young man in his swimming regalia. He is walking along the trail which follows the stream, and he approaches the cigar-smoking poet. He knows him. His name is Nick.
    Nick : Where the hell did you get that