Hobohemianisms

From "Clip Jobs", a running series on the Village Voice's blog in which every day they run an excerpt from their archives, here's Jimmy Breslin in 1958 reporting on a Jack Kerouac "meet the author" event in Brooklyn {see update after the quote}:

Every campus Bohemian, Hobohemian, and Subterranean had donned crew-neck sweater, taken pen and notebook in hand, and marched right down to that lecture to find out just what this crazy Kerouac and his beat generation are all about, anyway.

Jack, however, who had left Columbia “because I quite the football team and had to start paying tuition,” declined to make any pronouncements for the academy.

“What’s the beat generation’s outlook on life?”

“It’s an illusion.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s an illusion, not real—man, you ought to know, you go to college!”

The simmering hostility of the crowd boiled up as Kerouac identified his literary influences as Dostoevski and Walt Kelly. He calmly informed the Brooklynites that he wrote because he was bored, and published to make money.

Jack further declared that he was a story-teller and preacher, like Dostoevski, and that his writing, like a Chinaman, “spits forth intelligence.”

When a student inquired whether Kerouac was at present sober, Danny Price, one of Jack’s bushed entourage, broke in:

“There’s probably not one person in this room who doesn’t think he can write a book. But remember, this guy you’re putting down has written one.”

“Why don’t you answer our questions?” someone complained.

“I’m a Zen Master,” replied Kerouac.

Update: Apparently, this isn't that Jimmy Breslin.  That Jimmy Breslin had even less respect for Kerouac:  "It is not me. I knew Kerouac he lived in Richmond Hill, on 134th, near 101st.... The Philadelphia Inquirer, gave him the whole roll of UPI [teletype] paper so he could just keep typing. I should've given him a fucking box of periods. Taught a whole generation how to write run-on sentences. A disgrace!"