German Beat #1: Nicola Bardola

There has been much celebration of Kerouac's centenary but a new biography from the continent, issued to tie-in with the anniversary, is a particularly notable feature of this literary birthday bash

Although the author Nicola Bardola is from Zürich, Switzerland, he has spent the last 40 years of his life in Germany and writes in that national language. Bardola is a noted biographer having penned the life stories of a fascinating range of creative individuals including Yoko Ono, Elena Ferrante, Stephenie Meyer, Freddie Mercury, John Lennon and Ringo Starr. His latest project is of particular interest to Rock and the Beat Generation: the first biography of Jack Kerouac in German, subtitled Beatnik, Genie, Rebell and published just last month by Goldmann Verlag with a sensible eye to the novelist’s centenary. We very recently spoke to Bardola about the Kerouac venture…

I believe this is the first German biography of Jack Kerouac. Please translate the title.

The book is called Jack Kerouac: Beatnik, Genius, Rebel - The Biography. More than 30 years ago, a slim paperback book specifically for young people was published in Germany about Kerouac. There were also some articles and academic essays. But that is very little for an author as important as Jack Kerouac.

Pictured above: The Bardola biography Image credit, Thomas Kauertz

What has prompted you to write this?

I was born in Zürich in 1959. I went to grammar school in the centre of the city. But we lived on the outskirts. That's why I spent my lunch breaks and many hours after school in Zürich's old town, in the so-called ‘Niederdorf’. Between the old town and the school was the legendary bookshop at Oberdorfstrasse 5, right at the entrance to the old town. It was like the gateway to hell. The ‘Altstadt’ – ‘old town’ – back then was synonymous with alcohol, music and sex. It was a paradise for teenagers.

There were gambling halls, pubs, discos, table dance bars, sex shops and sex cinemas. It was at this gateway to sin that I discovered On the Road thanks to the bookseller Hans Rohr when I was 16. My parents and my teachers had no idea where I was hanging out and what I was reading. I read than everything that was available in German by Jack Kerouac. Thanks to Kerouac, I cut myself off from all the educators. Right after graduating from high school, I went to Bern to study.

There I published one of my first articles in the student magazine Berner Student in October 1979 on the tenth anniversary of Kerouac’s death. The conclusion at the time was: ‘Kerouac's work has survived all fashions comparable to his own: from the hippies to the punks. Who knows, maybe Kerouac's brave go-getting style will one day be considered the most authentic chronicle of his time.’ I guess, over 40 years later, that is indeed the case. By the way, where the Hans Rohr bookshop was back then, there is now Glenfahrn - The World of Liquid Pearls. Instead of Kerouac's books, there are now whisky bottles in the shop window. I guess Jack would have liked that!

Have you been keen to absorb the multiple biographies that exist, or have you avoided them and pursued your own primary research? And what is your position on Kerouac? Are you taking a particular angle on the writer, his work and life?

There was almost nothing about Kerouac in the German-speaking world, but a great deal in the English-speaking world. I checked everything available, especially the books by Charters, the Cassadys, Gifford & Lee, Nicosia, Clark, Weinreich, Turner, Miles, Johnson, Amburn and many others. I resolved contradictions and also tried to get up to date with the latest research thanks to the internet. I also read about the planned biography of Holly George-Warren and early on it was clear that I would put a focus on the beatnik women.

My 30-year-old daughter helped me a lot with this. She read the books and scattered texts by Carolyn Cassady, Joyce (Glassman) Johnson, Elise Cowen, ruth weiss, Edie Parker, Helen Weaver, Diane di Prima, Anne Waldman, Hettie Jones and Brenda Frazer. And the publishing team here in Munich is called ‘the Gold Women’ (‘die Goldfrauen’) because they are all women who look after my book and the publishing house is called Goldmann (‘Gold Man’). My editor studied American Studies because she had read Kerouac with enthusiasm as a teenager.

So a lot was well on its way and my notes kept growing and growing. But suddenly I had a writer's block. How was I to counter all my predecessors in the USA and UK with something new? So I took on all of Kerouac's available letters once again and much more thoroughly. That abruptly broke the mental blockade. My biography is essentially based on Kerouac's letters in combination with his CV. The extensive correspondence and diaries make it clear how incredibly obsessed Kerouac was with reading and honing his style. And at the same time, Kerouac celebrated life: sex, drugs, jazz and religion.

However, the film adaptations of his novels, which he very much wanted, were all unsuccessful, although, for example, On the Road, produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Walter Salles with Kristen Stewart in a leading role and Kirsten Dunst in a supporting role was still released in 2012. Kerouac did work for Hollywood at times, but his prose is not plot-driven. Kerouac's life, on the other hand, would make a good film subject. It reads like a novel. That's what appealed to me: the novelistic nature of his own life evidenced in each case by his letters.

The drama begins in his childhood with the death of his older brother Gerard. The trauma haunts him throughout his life. Many of the male friendships are Kerouac's attempt to find a substitute brother: Sebastian Sampas, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder or Philip Whalen. He marries three times. He also has a ménage-à-trois with Carolyn and Neal Cassady for years. He has a daughter he saw only twice. In addition, there is a murder case, a manslaughter, a suicide among his closest friends. Poverty, rejection of consumer society, world fame, Catholicism and Zen Buddhism would be essential ingredients for a bio-pic about Kerouac.

He is perhaps the first pop icon in history. And Kerouac almost incidentally paved the way for the hippies and New Journalism. Kerouac, the cross-generational mastermind and advocate of the countercultures, who can't come to terms with this role: his difficulties in dealing with cheering fans and intrusive media are related to the fact that, at the time, no one knew how violent the road fever he triggered would be. There were simply no precedents. ‘Fame kills,’ Kerouac wrote. He fell into the trap and drank himself to death. Literarily, he even exaggerated his delirium tremens into a transcendental experience. His life is plot-driven and material for the big screen, his books are not.

Will the book get an English translation?

That would make me happy, but very few books are translated from German into English.

How do you manage the tension between depicting the author's life and his semi-autobiographical writings? Is this a challenge?

Yes, it is a challenge. I have written half-fictional, half-autobiographical novels myself. It's interesting when literary critics mistake passages for real life that come from fantasy or are a transference from one person to another. That's why I was very careful about projecting Kerouac's prose onto his life. But, when there are no other sources, I have resorted to it, but aim to draw attention the uncertainty as such for the readers.

How do you think a biography of Kerouac might be received in Germany?

All the biographys in the USA were never translated into German. So, nobody can tell. My book has just been published. The first reactions are positive. But a prognosis is difficult, especially since Jack Kerouac is underestimated in this country by literary critics and literary scholars.

What is your personal take on this author and the Beat Generation? Are you a fan or merely academically interested?

I started out as a teenage fan thanks to the Hans Rohr bookshop in Zurich's sinful old town, and in later decades I kept checking what the academic establishment in the US had to say about Kerouac. Today I read Kerouac as both, as a symbiosis of fan and literary scholar. 

How would you summarise the status of Beat in your own country? Is there still an interest in the fiction and poetry and that period?

Kerouac electrifies every generation anew in the German-speaking world. His prose does not really age. In many cases it has a timeless effect. The hippies, however, are much more present than the beatniks. There is still a lot of catching up to do here.

How would you characterise the relationship of Kerouac to music, either his own or the legacy of inspiration he has left?

When sport became less important after he broke his leg, the importance of jazz grew in Kerouac's life. I consider literature and music to be of equal importance in Kerouac's life. "Genius" in my subtitle also refers to Kerouac's analyses and prophecies about certain musicians. Brilliant is Kerouac's fusion of bebop and words. No wonder that in this country, too, it is mainly musicians who pay tribute to him, first and foremost two of Germany's best-known rock bands, BAP with "Wat für e Booch" („What a book“) and Sportfreunde Stiller with "Unterwegs" („On the Road“).