Serendipity at the I-Hop

I was eating dinner at my usual I-Hop. As has been the custom lately, I was the only customer and talked to the server as we usually do before she took my order. I came in with a copy of Good Blonde & Others, a book of uncollected writing by Jack Kerouac, which I found a couple of weeks ago. I had never seen the book before though it was copyrighted 1993. It was edited by Donald Allen with a forward by none other than Robert Creeley. I've kept the book on my nightstand and have read bits and pieces of it. I decided to take it with me to dinner as I just finished another book and didn't have anything else to start right now. I started reading an essay titled "Are Writers Made or Born?" It's a question that often comes up in my lit classes. Kerouac had me with the first sentence: "Writers are made, for anybody who isn't illiterate can write; but geniuses of the writing art like Melville, Whitman or Thoreau are born." He goes on to define genius and differentiates it from talent. A celebrated virtuoso (Jack's word) who plays Brahms might be called a genius, but Brahms is really the genius while the violinist "is simply a talented interpreter." That struck a familiar cord in me. I thought back to Stephen Crane's short story, "The Open Boat." After the men in the boat finally made their break to shore and all but the oiler has been saved (so much for divine justice), the narrator reflects one more time on the whole event. "When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters." Of the sea's voice? Of the sea's meaning? Of the meaning of life? Did their brush with death (life?) prepare them to perhaps attempt to interpret what this all meant? Is that what life's experiences allow us to do? Is the sea's voice the voice of God? Do we ever know what he is saying to us if, in fact, he actually talks to us at all (or even exists)? Kerouac feels that there are those among us (Shakespeare, Yeats, Joyce, Melville, Emerson, Dickinson, Stein, Hemingway, as some he names) who do possess that genius. Kerouac's definition of genius "is simply a person who originates something never known before." Near the end, he says, "Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again." Starry Night always hangs in my lit classroom. I make frequent reference to it and van Gogh throughout the semester. I tell them of my walking out of and dropping a grad art history course after the professor said of van Gogh after he showed us that painting, "Obviously, he was insane." So, what is the point of all of this, and where is that serendipity? One of the assistant managers (herself a young woman, like my server) was showing a new server around the restaurant. She told her how each station should be set up. What goes where depends on what time of day it is. There is an effect that they are trying to achieve and maintain. At one point, she said, "You are trying to achieve an exuberant control" over the station and the impression it makes. I liked the saying so much that I asked her where it came from. She said it came from her boss who had a knack for saying things like that. I know the man she is talking about. I see him there some Sunday mornings. He watches over everything, maintaining an "exuberant control" over their busiest time of the week. The ebb and flow of the enterprise is inspiring. His staff does its best to interpret and carry out his vision. They are a very talented group. The man is a genius.