I wanted to capture the naïve innocence of that age in the writing. I wanted the writing to be as juvenile as the person I was. This is me at eighteen in 1967. I was full of it. Somehow I fitted this into the patchwork of the novel. Nothing could go wrong yet here I was standing next to the corpse of my father.
Excerpt – Bodies in a Window
I was on a high. I was eighteen years old and the whole world had opened up for me. It was like waking up from a long sleep. I was seeing so much. I was free to do what I wanted. There was nobody telling me what to do or ordering me about. I was shining with the brilliance of it. I felt like all the forces in the universe were conspiring to come together in some great ecstatic wonder. It all made sense. Every day was new – a great new adventure.
I had just read The Dharma Bums. Finished it last night. It was brilliant. I thought it was even better than On The Road. I reckon it was Kerouac’s masterpiece. I rate Kerouac as the best writer in the world. He was a crazy mad genius. He’d summed it up. Life was a mad journey. You had to live it to the max, get your kicks and seek out the meaning in it. There was an underlying truth to everything. All you had to do was dig it out. It made sense to me. There was a vibration running through the universe that connected us all. There was poetry, music and madness. I knew what I wanted out of life. I also knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want a boring career like my parents were pushing me towards. I wanted a big dollop of Kerouac’s craziness. That would do me fine.
My parents were all caught up in this mind-numbing, unreal trip. I wanted none of it. I looked at their humdrum life and thought it was all such a waste. It was all empty. I wanted something much more exciting and real. They wanted me to get into some heavy bread trip. Who was interested in that? That was like dying. You only had so much time in this life and I wanted my life full of wonder not working my arse off in some career to earn money to buy things and then being too knackered when you got home to do anything other than watch some vacuous rubbish on the telly. That was like being some boring zombie. I certainly didn’t want to become some boring zombie like all those deadheads on the estate. I wanted a lot more than that. I wanted to live and find out what it was all about – life, love, poetry and madness. I wanted some of that craziness that Kerouac wrote about. I wish I could have lived in the US back in the fifties. I would have loved that. He was a true pioneer. That would have been just great.
But anyway, I’ve found Kerouac – and Ginsberg, and Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Roy Harper. There’s no end to it. I’ve finally woken up and come alive. The whole of life is a revelation. It feels like I’ve just woken up.
Not only that but I’ve met this girl and everything is great. I’m on a constant high. It never stops. Life is a buzz. There is a Zen to it. When you got it right it all came together. It is like all the currents in the universe are conspiring – a perfect moment. Marvellous. It was certainly coming together for me right now.
I felt that I had it sussed. There was a vibe around and I was hooked into it. I could feel it. The music, poetry, beat stuff and now this girl. It was all in some perfect harmony. The world was a wonderful place once you got into the positive groove. I was riding the biggest wave and hooked right into that groove. Everything was coming together. Nothing could go wrong.
Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books