Improvisation in Jack Kerouac’s “Jazz” Writing: Intersubjectivity, Authenticity, and the Collectivist Utopia

ABSTRACT Jack Kerouac’s “spontaneous” style has often been described as an anti-representational innovation that disrupts conventional narrative modes with multimedia features such as orality and jazz. This article outlines the aesthetics of Kerouac’s jazz writing, suggesting that its improvisational characteristic, in particular, functions as a tool for establishing intersubjective experiences, which contribute to the manifestation of authenticity and the construction and retrieval of empathetic opportunities with others. The jazz performances chronicled in On the Road could be regarded as the blueprint for Kerouac’s writing method, which employs technical elements of jazz improvisation such as crescendo, dragging, and minimalist variations. For Kerouac, improvisation is the performance of experimentations on the medium of artistic expression. This theory is demonstrated in his sketches of people’s lives, which he does by blending meticulous observation with the recollection of past events and the fabrication of fictional ones. Kerouac uses improvisation as a means of empathizing with others, a process that also reveals potential for intersubjective engagement from his readers.