Kerouac. Could you help me?

Question

Since I do not know a lot about slang, I do not understand these phrases of Mexico City Blues (Jack Kerouac). What means these phrases?

1. Yes baby, Count Blue
Basie’s fat old Chock
Wallopin Fat Rushing
Was a wow old saloon man

2. “Anyway it happened”
says Allen (Poe) Ginsberg
Quote from Plato right?
Time on a bat — growl of truck

3. Has got him by the balls
And Hammerthongs
And central Goonyak
Worp Ward
Orphantail

4. In his railroad tam o shanter
Commorative termagant
Able to dissect such tycoon

5. Mexico City Bop
I get the huck bop

6. Maybe I’m crazy, and my parts
Are scattered still —didn’t gather
Em when form was passin out
The window of the giver

7. Dances princely mincing
Charley jargots

8. Take thirty (goofballs) to be safe
Or else praps forty be better

9. Mal Hishaps Deameaning
Lost As s-Kicked out
Or go to jail
Keep the door locked

Answer 1

Good men who live have karma of a dove. It is 242 choruses, 242 poems. As is everything written by Kerouac, it is autobiographical. How can Mexico have a positive association in Beat history when William Burroughs killed his wife there in a William Tell experiment? Anything by Kerouac was edited and promoted by Allen Ginsberg and for that reason alone a book of poems with Mexico in the title is of interest.
Thinking of comfortable thoughts is what modern society has branded loafing is a line in one of the poems. Zen provides much of the impetus for the collection of poems. Kerouac's work manages to create an atmosphere of tropical vegetation and light. The work is free-form and jazz-like.

Automatic writing? Well, maybe not automatic writing precisely. Certainly the word-play and the fluidity remind the reader of Gertrude Stein. (Mention Gertrude Stein and here we are at chorus 31.)

I like the prose better, but I like the idea of the book and the arrangement. The Beats stood for blessedness and freedom. MEXICO CITY BLUES is an appropriate manifestation of Beat ideology. Fifty first Chorus says America is a permisible dream, a Whitmanesque expression.

Answer 2

On the Road gets all the publicity obviously but I believe Dharma Bums is a better book with characters it is easier to feel empathy for. The distinction of course is that Dharma Bums was written about a single episode whereas On the Rod was actually originally something like nine trips but his publisher made him combine all the best bits because it rambled too much. I find the result is a pastiche of characters without the bones. He also wrote a good little group of short stories called lonesome traveller which has a bit of the background for the other stories plus some extras. Visions of Cody is meant to be quite good but I've never read it, so is Pic

Answer 3

8. "goofballs" refers to a drug, can't remember which one.Don't try to make too much sense of Keroac's "poetry". Remember he was drunk and/or high most of the time. They say that if you can remember the 60's you weren't there. I was there--so they tell me.