Paradise found

Writer and journalism instructor Jay Atkinson is one of the few Boston University faculty members who can say he has hitchhiked in the past year. In the beginning of Atkinson’s latest book, Paradise Road &-&- a retracing of Jack Kerouac’s route in On The Road &-&- the writer and Methuen native finds himself on the shoulder of the Henry Hudson Highway near the George Washington Bridge in New York with his thumb in the air, waiting for a ride that will take him upstate to complete the first leg of a journey that Kerouac set off on 63 years ago.

Paradise Road recounts Atkinson’s adventures through New York, New Orleans, Mexico, California and Colorado &-&- the same places that Kerouac wrote about in On The Road, a book that has become synonymous with the Beat Generation. But while Atkinson’s path mirrored Kerouac’s, the writing in Paradise Road is far from imitation, and it portrays a whole new look at a very different world than what Kerouac encountered. We caught up with the writer to ask him a few questions about his book and his writing:

The MUSE: What motivated you to write the book?
Jay Atkinson: “I’m from the same part of the Merrimack Valley that Kerouac was from. He was a huge influence on my writing. In Paradise Road, I combine what I learned as a journalist with what I learned as a fiction writer. Kerouac was famous for “true story’ novels so I wanted to take his story 60 years later and apply the skills of a journalist and a fiction writer in retracing his steps.”

TM: What is notetaking like for you on trips like this?
JA: I filled an old-fashioned notebook on each of the five trips. Note taking was continuous. I would write 800-2000 words a day and then when I got home I would word-process it. In terms of what I brought with me, I had a backpack with a notebook and some pencils. I was throwback in that sense. My technique was to record everything I saw as I saw it.

TM: What would you ask Jack Kerouac if you could meet him?
JA: There were all different Kerouacs &- he died at 47 and had a very unhappy, unproductive and mean-spirited last few years so I wouldn’t want to be with that Kerouac. But if I had a time machine I would spend the late 1940s to mid-1950s with him when he was still physically active and when he was writing. He wrote incessantly. William Burroughs said that Kerouac was always a guy sitting in the corner and writing in a notebook. If I could just ride the subway in New York City with him, that would be great. Kerouac was not suited for being famous. He couldn’t handle it. But when he was younger, that’s when he would have been the guy to know. He is the kind of guy who you’d want to go shoot baskets with or something, and then go get a sandwich.

TM:What are some words of advice you’d give to an aspiring novelist or journalist?
JA: Although we have technological advantages today, those advantages are accessories to the main talent. The main talent still needs to be recording what you see in words. And that means you need to do an enormous amount of reading and you have to have a daily output. Kerouac used to record how many words he wrote a day and then assign himself a batting average like in baseball. If you want to be good at it, you have to do it. If you want to excel at the craft you have to work at it. Accessories are good, but if you want to be a writer, you have to write. You have to write all the time.