On the American Sense of Space

and that of Bedfordshire

I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to write a novel of ideas.

Although fairly well disguised, that’s what my first novel Beatniks, was trying to be.

And one of its main ideas — which I’ve worried at this last couple of days — was the difference between American and English horizons.

Jane Austen, all the way back in Northanger Abbey, gave some sense of this —

‘Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?’

Where there’s a neighbourhood of voluntary spies — where the net curtains twitch in the bungalows, and the landlord of the local pub knew you were coming half an hour before you did — it’s very hard to get away from anyone, let alone from oneself.

That’s where I was aiming with this little scene.

Away-ish.

When we join them here, Jack and Neal (not their real names) and Mary (her real name) are heading off on an epic road trip down from Bedford to Brighton.

Just as their heroes Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady used to do in 1940s and 50s America.

My characters were, you see, 1990s Beatniks from Bedford.

The working title of the novel, luckily ditched, was Bedniks.

Faced with arriving at their destination within four hours max, Jack and Neal are confronted with some of the limits I found myself facing when I tried to write fiction.

I summarised it for myself as, ‘America got On the Road, we got On the Buses.’

Go West, young man, and you’ll reach Fishguard.

This is a serious problem for dreamers, as Jack and Neal are — as I was.

What I found to write about was comic disillusion.

We were just coming out of St Albans when Jack started up:

‘It’s such a drag we aren’t in America and this isn’t the beginning of a 3,000 mile drive — off into the heart of the wild neon American night — coast to coast — along all the long heavenly roads — having wild adventures and high times and sad times - meeting up with old buddies and making new ones — making crazy detours for guys thumbing rides.’

Neal chimed in immediately:

‘England is such a small island. You drive to the edge, then all you can do is stop. There’s nowhere else to go. Unless you keep driving. Unless you go over the edge - off the road — into the sea. I want to keep going. I never want to stop. North, South, East, West — I don’t care. Just get me off this island! Take me away! Take me to America!’

I’d never heard him speak so wildly.

He kept going:

‘We’re stuck here, hemmed in. That’s why there’s no rhapsody of our roads. England has no Whitman; could never have. There’s no fucking acceleration here. As soon as you start going fast and mad enough, you have to slow down and stop, turn slowly round and start speeding up again. We’re stuck here. But I want to get out! Brighton isn’t far enough for me. I want to go all the way: New York to San Francisco, via Denver — and then down to New Mexico. Maybe stop off in Lowell, see Kerouac’s birthplace, or Woodstock, where Dylan died. Or find Desolation Peak. Or Hibbing. Or Big Sur. But just cruising through, you know, windows down. Stopping only to pick up hitch-hikers. Picking up speed, picking up more speed. Being there only as long as you’re passing through. I want to stop being a point, I want to be a line. I want to be an arrow, a meteor, a highway.’

Jack had wound down the window all the way. He stuck his head out and started screaming: ‘I’m getting out of here! You’re still here, I’m already gone!’ He whooped. ‘I’m gone!’

Eyes were following us: a woman with her kids outside McDonald’s, a man in a cardigan waiting at some traffic lights, a policewoman ticking off a couple of skateboarders.

Jack stuck his head back in.

‘Drive faster!’ he said. ‘And honk the horn!’

‘No,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘I’m going at 30. If I go any faster, I’ll get caught on a speed-camera.’

Photo credit: Carolyn Cassady