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The Subterraneans is a 1958 novella by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with a black woman named Alene Lee (1931-1991) in San Francisco, 1953. In the novel she is renamed "Mardou Fox," and described as a carefree spirit who frequents the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco. Other well-known personalities and friends from the author's life also appear thinly disguised in the novel. The character Frank Carmody is based on William Burroughs, and Adam Moorad on Allen Ginsberg. Even Gore Vidal appears as successful novelist Arial Lavalina. Kerouac's alter ego is named Leo Percepied, and his long-time friend Neal Cassady is mentioned only in passing as Leroy.

Background
When Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans in the early 1950s, anti-miscegenation laws remained in effect in more than 15 states, and California's law was only overturned in 1948 (see Perez v. Sharp).

Characters
Kerouac often based his fictional characters on friends and family.


 * Leo Percepied
 * The novel's protagonist, based on Kerouac himself.


 * Julian Alexander
 * Based on Anton Rosenberg.


 * Roxanne
 * Based on Iris Brodie.


 * Frank Carmody
 * Based on the Beat writer William S. Burroughs.


 * Jane
 * Based on Joan Vollmer, wife of Burroughs.


 * Sam Vedder
 * Based on Lucien Carr.


 * Leroy
 * Based on Neal Cassady.


 * Yuri Gligoric
 * Based on the Beat poet Gregory Corso.


 * Roger Beloit
 * Based on the jazz musician Allen Eager.


 * Harold Sand
 * Based on the novelist Wiliam Gaddis.


 * Adam Moorad
 * Based on the poet Allen Ginsberg.


 * Annie
 * Based on LuAnne Henderson, wife of Cassady.


 * Balliol MacJones
 * Based on the novelist John Clellon Holmes.


 * Fritz Nicholas
 * Based on Bill Keck.


 * Mardou Fox
 * Based on Alene Lee. Nancy McCampbell-Grace describes Mardou as "Intelligent, well read, independent, perceptive, feisty, and physically strong, she is as tangible as Leo, and he respects her as much as he does his male friends and heroes who have suffered and endured. He perceives her as a redeemer, a young, 'cool,' black subterranean symbolizing his entry into San Francisco's intellectual jazz-oriented avant garde."


 * Larry O'Hara
 * Based on Jerry Newman.


 * Arial Lavalina
 * Based on the novelist Gore Vidal.

Criticism and literary significance
Nancy McCampbell-Grace has described the novel as "a gnarled and naked confessional centered on the intersection of race, class, and personal autonomy." McCampbell-Grace argues that the narrator of The Subterraneans begins the novel plagued by guilt and facing a choice: to continue with a life of self-hatred, or to attempt to redeem himself and the entire United States. He chooses the latter, and Mardou Fox becomes a means of finding "respite from obligation, regimentation, routinization, and inequality," and serves "as a metaphor for democracy, offering the gift of personal and social progress through the image of the embracing lovers." Love, however, is not enough, and the relationship ends in the reassertion of white male supremacy.

The novel, written as a first-person memoir, has been criticized for its portrayal of American minority groups, especially African Americans, in a superficial light, often portraying them in a humble and primitive manner without showing insight into their culture or social position at the time. The position of jazz and jazz culture is central to the novel, tying together the themes of Kerouac's writing here as elsewhere, and expressed in the "spontaneous prose" style in which he composed most of his works. The following quotation from Chapter 1 illustrates the spontaneous prose style of The Subterraneans:

Mardou:

Making a new start, starting from fresh in the rain, 'Why should anyone want to hurt my little heart, my feet, my little hands, my skin that I'm wrapt in because God wants me warm and Inside, my toes--why did God make all this so decayable and dieable and harmable and wants to make me realize and scream--why the wild ground and bodies bare and breaks--I quaked when the giver creamed, when my father screamed, my mother dreamed---I started small and ballooned up and now I'm big and a naked child again and only to cry and fear. - Ah - Protect yourself, angel of no harm, you who've never and could never harm and crack another innocent in its shell and thin veiled pain - wrap a robe around you, honeylamb - protect yourself from harm and wait, till Daddy comes again, and Mama throws you warm inside her valley of the moon, loom at the loom of patient time, be happy in the mornings.

Film version
A 1960 film adaptation changed the African American character Mardou Fox, Kerouac's love interest, to a young French girl (played by Leslie Caron) to better fit both contemporary social and Hollywood palates. While it was derided and vehemently criticized by Allen Ginsberg among others, for its two-dimensional characters, it illustrates the way the film industry attempted to exploit the emerging popularity of this culture as it grew in San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York.

A Greenwich Village beatnik bar setting had been used in Richard Quine's film Bell, Book and Candle (1958), but Ranald MacDougall's adaptation of Kerouac's novel, scripted by Robert Thom, was less successful.

The Subterraneans was one of the final MGM films produced by Arthur Freed, and features a score by André Previn and brief appearances by jazz singer Carmen McRae singing "Coffee Time," and saxophonists Gerry Mulligan, as a street priest, and Art Pepper. Comedian Arte Johnson plays the Gore Vidal character, here named Arial Lavalerra.

Plot
Leo is a 28-year-old novelist who still lives at home with his mother. One night he stumbles upon some beatniks at a coffee house. He falls in love with the beautiful but unstable Mardou Fox.

Roxanne warns Mardou away from Leo, who says his love for her is causing him writers block. Mardou falls pregnant. She and Leo wind up together.

Cast

 * Leslie Caron as Mardou Fox
 * George Peppard as Leo Percepied
 * Janice Rule as Roxanne
 * Roddy McDowall as Yuri Gligoric
 * Anne Seymour as Charlotte Percepied
 * Jim Hutton as Adam Moorad
 * Scott Marlowe as Julien Alexander
 * Arte Johnson as Arial Lavalerra
 * Ruth Storey as Analyst
 * Bert Freed as Bartender
 * Gerry Mulligan as Reverend Joshua Hoskins
 * Carmen McRae as Herself

Production
The novel was optioned by Arthur Freed of MGM as a possible follow up to Some Came Running. Like that, it was originally intended to star Dean Martin. Nicole Maurey was announced to play the female lead.

Eventually George Peppard and Leslie Caron were signed. Roddy McDowall also joined the cast, his first film in nine years. Janice Rule was married to Robert Thom, who wrote the script.

Box Office
According to MGM records the film earned only $340,000 in the US and Canada and $425,000 elsewhere resulting in a loss of $1,311,000.