Before we wrote The Beaver Papers, Will Jacobs and I had worked constantly, furiously, and obsessively to become published novelists. Nothing else had mattered to either of us since our teens except "becoming a writer," and to us, like most young lit-heads, that meant novels. I'd dropped out of college to write novels; Will had refused to go in the first place. We met at a used bookstore, where we'd both taken jobs in order not to have to think about anything but books. We'd each written a few of the things, every one of them completely dismissed by every agent and editor we sent them to. Then we wrote one together—in multiple Faulknerian first person voices—which garnered no greater worldly success than the comment by our boss at the bookstore that "it's actually not as bad as I thought it would be." Ultimately we even compromised our literary purity just so we could jam a foot into the doorway of publishing: Will wrote a hard-boiled mystery and I wrote a kids' book. Those didn't work any better than the Faulkner homage had.
During those years of frustration, we would blow off steam by writing nonsense to make each other laugh. We discovered that parody enabled us both to try on the clothes of the writers we loved and to make fun of the crap that we saw other (luckier, less deserving) writers getting away with. We wrote intentionally bad poetry and mock scholarly reviews. And we wrote summaries of episodes of Leave It to Beaver as if they'd been written by all our favorite authors. None of it intended for anyone's eyes but our own...and sometimes those of a long-suffering roommate.
But when those roommates—Jim Zook for me, Chip Kabrich for Will—started laughing out loud at our Beaver parodies, we experienced, for the first time in our lives, what it was like to write for an audience that actually wanted to hear us. It was a heady feeling, enough to make us write twenty-five of those parodies and read them to anyone who would sit still. At some point, I don't remember when or how, we realized that we might be able to get a book out of them, and maybe even sell it to a publisher...and if we could get any book into print, even this silly thing, then surely that would open the door to getting our novels published!
We were almost right about that. Every sale we've made since then—humor articles, comic books, nonfiction books, screenplays—has happened, directly or indirectly, because of this book that we knocked off to distract ourselves from the frustration of not being able to sell any of the books that we were determined to build our careers on. But one thing still hasn't happened: after thirty years, neither of us has gotten a novel published. God, as they say, has a good sense of humor.
Now, on to the second excerpt and the first parody...
May 5, 1963
Jack Kerouac, leading voice of the Beat Generation, often wrote about the search for America. Here, on the heels of his Big Sur, he brings to light the search theme that was always latent in Leave It to Beaver.
Jack Kerouac
Eddie steals a bike and passes Mary Ellen Rogers' house on the way to Wally's. Mary Ellen, on the porch with her friend Elma, nudges her and says, "There goes Eddie Haskell. I wonder where he's going to?" Elma looks mystified and says, "I wonder where he's coming from?"
At Wally's, Eddie says, "Hey, Sam, what state are we in?" Wally, at his desk in his bedroom, typing on a huge roll of paper, says, "Aw, go on, Eddie. I don't have time to think about things like that. I'm writing a novel." Eddie says, "Oh, yeah? Do you have time to notice that?" He points to the bike out the window. "Gee, where'd you get the new wheels?" asks Wally. Beaver, reading A Coney Island of the Mind, says, "Aw, he probably swiped it." Eddie says, "Shut up, squirt. You don't know the meaning of Beat."
Beaver asks, "Hey, Wally, what direction is San Francisco from here?" Wally looks mystified: "Gee, I dunno, Beav. In geography class they told us it was on the West Coast, but...." Eddie says, "Come on, Gertrude, don't be such a square. Why do you think I swiped the wheels? These old-timers don't know any more about where we are than we do. We've got to found out for ourselves." "Gosh, I don't know, Eddie," says Wally. But Eddie insists and Wally agrees. Eddie says, "All we've got to do is make tracks until we get to some city we've heard of. Then we'll know what state we're in."
They pass a road sign reading, BELL PORT, 5 MILES. Wally says, "Gee, Eddie, it's like we're in search of America." Eddie says, "To hell with that, Sam. I just want to know where in America we are."
They arrive in Bell Port, buy a bottle of whiskey, drink themselves blind, and recite Ginsberg's Howl in chorus. They accost strangers and ask where they are. Unanimously, the strangers answer, "In Bell Port." They ask, "But where's Bell Port?" The strangers look at them, mystified, and walk away.
They awake among empty bottles in a sleazy hotel. Suddenly Ward enters to take them home. At home, in the den, Ward says, "When I was your age, Wally, I went looking for America too. But then I realized that this was America, right here in Mayfield." Wally says, "Sure, Dad. But what part of America?" Ward looks mystified.
TAG: Beaver bursts into the boys' bedroom waving an envelope. "Hey, Wally! Hey, Wally! Look, you got a letter from Viking Press." Wally opens the envelope and says, "Holy cow, Beav. They're publishing my novel." Beaver teases him good-naturedly in his screeching falsetto: "Bookworm! Bookworm!" Wally good-naturedly hits him with a pillow.
Next week: John Steinbeck's The Beaver of Wrath.
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