Chapter 10 - Visions of Cody as Metafiction

Summary

Kerouac considered Visions of Cody his masterpiece. A strange, highly complex work, it is both a radical reimagining and rewriting of some central motifs and characters found in On the Road, and a showcase for Kerouac’s varied theories of writing. If On the Road is “about” the relationship between two friends, a writer and a raconteur, Visions of Cody is about how to best represent this relationship, and so becomes in turn “about” the nature of the writer’s consciousness and his ability to represent or not “the real.” Given such preoccupations, Visions of Cody more closely resembles postmodern metafiction than it does On the Road. This chapter reads it in light of its metafictional experimentations and explorations. In Visions of Cody, Kerouac strives to get down what “actually happened” by turning to sketching, Spontaneous Prose, and even tape recording and transcribing lengthy conversations between him and Neal Cassady. Ultimately, this chapter shows, by reading Visions of Cody as metafiction, we can see how Kerouac created new possibilities and directions for postwar avant-garde writing.