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The Third Trip to Raton Canyon Back in Big Sur, the chemistry is all wrong. Dave Wain seems to be in a better frame of mind than Dulouz , and even he begins to suggest that Dulouz is drinking too much. Nobody knows what to do with little Elliot, and Billie is whining about Dulouz 's increasing reluctance to marry her. Bugged out, drunk and unable to find any inner peace, Dulouz starts to crack up and think that everybody is plotting to destroy him. Maybe Cody set him up with Billie so she could marry him, kill him and steal his money for Cody. Dave tries to cheer everybody up by ceremonially cooking up a big fish, but then Dave and Ramona fall asleep in the best spot and Dulouz decides they're in on the plot too. The climax of the book is the night that follows, a horrible sleepless night for Dulouz . Wriggling in a tight sleeping bag with the whining and miserable Billie, Dulouz has hit bottom and knows it. He knows he needs to sleep but can't. The few times he comes close to dozing off, Elliot thumps his foot and wakes him. Dulouz goes outside and has a vision of a cross, but even the vision is anti-climactic, and doesn't stop his ghastly horrors from tormenting him. The next morning is the worst of all, because Dulouz demands that they all go home, cutting their getaway short and putting everybody in a terrible mood. (I've had vacations like this, actually, though I guess not as bad.) They dig a hole to bury the garbage before they leave, and this freaks Dulouz out even more, because the hole is just the right size for a little Elliot-sized coffin, which sets off all kinds of Freudian tremors within Dulouz 's soul. Billie yells at him "Oh, you're so fucking neurotic!" and that seems to sum the situation up as well as anything anybody else says. By the end of the book nothing has been learned and much has been lost. At the beginning of the story the narrator (that is, Kerouac) believed that nature (self-reliance, Buddhism, spiritual purity, truth) might still save his soul. By the end of the book that hope is exposed as a naive dream. It is difficult to imagine this narrator ever venturing into nature alone again, or ever having the courage to truly examine his soul again. To be afraid of nature is to be afraid of yourself, and that is the state the narrator is in at the end of this book. The book concludes with 'Sea', the poem in which Kerouac/Dulouz tried to capture the sounds and words of the Pacific Ocean. It's an interesting experiment, and it's nice that Kerouac finds a way to end this very depressing book on a note that is not a complete downer. This poem reminds us that this book is not just a downer -- it's a cosmic downer. As if Kerouac got bummed out for all our sins. That's what I get out of this fascinating and important book, anyway. 'Big Sur' was published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in 1962.
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