Big Sur Transformation Quotes Page 3
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #7 "a good-looking teenager with blonde hair who wants to be a sensational new Chet Baker singer and comes on with that tiresome hipster approach that was natural 5 or 10 or even 25 years ago but now in 1960 is a pose, in fact I dug him as a con man conning Dave" (11.10) |
Ron Blake is an important character for this reason – he represents the would-be Beat generation that so frustrates Jack. Jack knows that things have changed, in America, in himself, since his younger days.
| Quote #8 "You said in 1957 in the grass drunk on whiskey you were the greatest thinker in the world" -- "That was before I fell asleep and woke up: now I realize I'm no good at all and that makes me feel free" -- "You're not even free being no good, you better stop thinking, that's all'. (30.3) |
In seeking enlightenment, Jack has actually driven himself to madness. The knowledge he thought would help him has only tormented him.
| Quote #9 "I wanta go home and die with my cat. " I could be a handsome thin young president in a suit sitting in an oldfashioned rocking chair, no instead I'm just the Phantom of the Opera standing by a drape among dead fish and broken chairs -- Can it be that no one cares who made me or why? (31.4) |
In the process of self-examination Jack recognizes his lost potential. He no longer identifies as a writer or even a drunkard. In failing to understand who is he, he finds only what he could have been.
