favor of increased government involvementnin the energy field, even suggestingnthat energy prices be kept low asnpart of our national energy policy. Thatnis analogous to a prescription for a pintnof arsenic if a cupful didn’t do the job.nIt will undoubtedly take more than Dr.nReisman s work to eliminate the ignorancenwhich must be at the base of suchnsuggestions, but we at least have in hisnbook a significant contribution towardnthat end. DnCo-opting the Beat GenerationnDennis McNally: Desolate Angel:nJack Kerouac, the Beat Generation,nand America; Random House; NewnYork.nby Gordon M. PradlnOoaring across his symbolic landscapenof the American experience,nquesting for evaporated essences in thenmodern blade of grass, comes Sal Paradise,nself-proclaimed reviver of thosenvanished visions that had once sprungnout of that ego originally residing in thenbody of a Mr. Whitman. Halfway acrossnAmerica, Sal soberly confides in hisnreaders, “I was at the dividing linenbetween the East of my youth and thenWest of my future.” Sadly, because itnwas a youth that never was, it is a futurenthat never will be.nIn Desolate Angel, Dennis McNallynrecounts the saga that was JacknKerouac, alias Sal Paradise, peripateticnhero of the Beat Generation, On thenRoad savior of an uptight America. Itnis a tale of talent and of dissipation, ofndreams and of nightmares, of communitynand of alienation. And it is antale with a moral: Don’t cross the liberalncorporate structure or it’ll eventuallyndestroy you by buying a piece of yournaction.nJVerouac’s beginnings in Lowell,nMassachusetts set the themes for thenrestless journey of his life toward itsnown destruction. Of French-Canadianndescent, he grew up an outsider to thenDr. Pradl is Professor of English atnNew York University.nS8inChronicles of Culturenrooted past of a New England community.nHis older brother, Gerard, diednwhen Jack was only four, and Jack sufferednmuch guilt at this loss, especiallynsince he felt he could never approachnhis idealized image of Gerard that grewnout of Gerard’s saintlike behavior duringna sickly childhood. With relief it wasnfrequently easier for Jack to assumenan opposite role of wickedness and rebellion,neven if this role only appearednin fantasy. For while still in Lowell,nJack’s public self bowed to the authoritynof the nuns who controlled his Catholicnschooling. Yet the inner self, the unlovednchild, discovered the world andnpower of language, a power that Jacknwould eventually use in trying to awakennAmerica to a new spiritual awareness.nThroughout his life Jack maintainedna strangle-hold relationship with hisnmother. She was still a part of his householdnwhen he died, and yet he couldnnever please her, convinced as he wasnthat it was only Gerard that she loved.nThe unsatisfying nature of this primarynrelationship, along with the Virgin Maryncontext of the Catholic Church, servednto poison his subsequent encountersnwith women. Although he was marriednmore than once, he was never able tonset down lasting roots with a woman.nIn more conventional ways. Jack wasnalso a disappointment to his father, who,nin the midst of his own career failures,nhad staked so much on Jack’s succeedingnin terms of the traditional Americanndream. Yet before he dropped out.nJack’s conventional side did bring himnas far as his sophomore year at Columbianon a football scholarship, and later,nfor all his supposed radicalism. Jacknnndisdained the encroaching welfare statenand espoused a patriotic “America First”nduring the red scares of the fifties.nThe surprisingly conservative messagenof Kerouac’s writing, despite itsnradical trappings, is really only understoodnwhen these frustrations, contradictions,nand yearnings of his youth arenmade explicit. Without writing anothernglib psychohistory, McNally has givennus enough background material andncommentary on the early years for usnto be able to see that Jack’s ongoingnsense of disorder and dislocation resultednlargely from the unsatisfactorynnature of his initial object relationships.nIn attempting to recover love and establishna youth that might reasonably extendninto mature adulthood. Jack ended bynbecoming his own worst enemy. Becausenof his early hurts he ironically felt mostnpotent in the role of his bad self, a selfnthat undercut his continual cry for communitynand relationship by staying innperpetual motion on the road. For tonget too close to others, especiallynwomen, was to expose the void in oneself.nYet the longing in his writingnremained true to the central Americannvision of self-determination. The messagensoured, however, because the communitynroots of responsibility andnpredictability were never established.nThe merry band frantically roaming thencountryside could never hope to sustainnitself because it was not willing to commitnitself to anything beyond thenmoment. And thus the dream of a newnAmerica literally drowned for Kerouacnin the despair of alcoholism.nAlcoholism, Menninger tells us, is andefense against “internal dangers.” Unablento solve the existential problemsnof living, unable to face the destructivenelements of being, the alcoholic commitsna convenient self-indulgent suicide, andnthis has profound implications for thensubstance of the art created by the alcoholic.nIt is just this connection betweenna poet’s “ontological insecurity” and thenmanifest content of the created poemsnthat has, for example, been explorednby the critic David Holbrook in hisn