The pathos in this hospital has convinced me, as it did Hemingway in Italy, that ‘the defeated are the strongest.’ Everyone here is defeated, even this ‘broth of a Breton.’ I have been defeated by the world with considerable help from my greatest enemy, myself, and now I am ready to work. I realize the limitations of my knowledge, and the irregularity of my intellect. Knowledge and intellection serve a Tolstoi—but a Tolstoi must be older, must see more as well—and I am not going to be a Tolstoi. Surely I will be a Kerouac, whatever that suggests. Knowledge comes with time.
As far as creative powers go, I have them and I know it. All I need now is faith in myself … only from there can a faith truly dilate and expand to ‘mankind.’ I must change my life, now.
—Jack Kerouac, in 1943.
This article about his military file is worth a gander for you restless writer types.
