124. LIVE! From The LA Kerouac Festival at Typewriters Anonymous: The Kerouac We Ignore w/ Daniel Dissinger

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Daniel Dissinger recorded live from Typewriters Anonymous to give the keynote talk at the LA Kerouac Festival on April 18th, 2026. His talk, “The Kerouac We Ignore,” opens a much-needed conversation into Kerouac’s pre-On the Road work and introduces a nuanced analysis of father-son relationships, masculinity, vocational identity, and Kerouac’s lifelong search for love, both of self and others. Daniel brings the audience through his deeply personal journey with Kerouac’s books, the three books that started him on the Kerouac journey, his scholastic instinct that something was wrong with the transition from The Town and the City to On the Road, how seeing the On the Road scroll at the Denver Public Library in 2007 changed everything, and what the opening lines of the scroll version confirmed for him.

bell hooks’ works All About Love and The Will to Change come into the conversation and this is where Daniel shows how generational trauma, specifically connected to hyper-masculinity and patriarchy created for Kerouac a misunderstanding and inability love himself for the man he was and how his whole life became an unending desire to prove his worth in a patriarchal world. At the end of the talk, Daniel answers some questions from the audience about Kenneth Rexroth, the difference between loneliness and solitude, why did he bring bell hooks into the Kerouac scholarship, and so much more.

I hope you enjoy this episode. A special thank you to Philip and Elizabeth Nails at Typewriters Anonymous for having and supporting this amazing event.

Approximate Rundown

00:00 Welcome and Topic

01:28 Finding Kerouac

02:19 Town and the City

04:10 Desolation Angels Praise

06:04 Scroll Discovery

07:43 Fathers in On the Road

09:17 New Early Works

14:24 Masculinity Framework

15:31 Typewriter and Legacy

17:19 Bell Hooks and Love

21:45 Work and Patriarchy

25:22 George Martin Funeral

29:51 Duluoz Legend Hauntings

32:37 Publishing Backlash

34:24 Podcasts and Thanks

35:36 Q&A Solitude vs Loneliness

39:27 Why Bell Hooks

41:11 Rexroth Feud

44:31 Missing Scroll Material

47:33 Final Thoughts and Farewell

Daniel Dissinger is an Associate Professor in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California, host of the award-winning podcast Writing Remix, a poet, Kerouac scholar, and writing coach. Dan earned his PhD and MA from Saint John’s University as well as an MFA from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. Dan’s poetry has been published in a variety of journals, and Shadow Mountain Press published his first chapbook, tracing the shape. In 2021, he co-created an international network of academic podcasters called The Humanities Podcast Network.

People, Texts & Podcasts Mentioned in the Episode

“Kerouac was working through something between fathers and sons, and On the Road then became much more than just this rebellious content about dissent […] It all of a sudden opened up a whole world in that book […] and it became a book that […] was almost about mourning and grieving the loss of a father and at the same time, fatherless sons in a fatherless world post-World War II.”
-Daniel Dissinger

“Patriarchy is willing to bleed men and women dry for their productivity […] with Kerouac, it’s like let’s work [men] to the ground and then get rid of them ’cause there’s no place for them if they’re unable to work anymore.”
-Daniel Dissinger

“If [Kerouac] were to have [had the chance to] read All About Love, maybe he would have been able to see that there was a different path for him […] I don’t think he understood that it was possible because a lot of the men that he saw in his life just were beaten down by […] patriarchy and just ended up dying and fading away.”
-Daniel Dissinger

“On the Road, it’s a book that opened up so many different avenues of thought for myself, to think that I could write in a way that truly came deep from within, and was a way for me to express my personal voice and my thoughts and ideas, and not be afraid to also be deeply emotional in that writing.”
-Daniel Dissinger

“bell hooks’ All About Love and The Will to Change, these two books paired together [have] become the framing mechanism that I see for all of these things pre-On the Road for Kerouac […] It’s not only a search to kind of figure out a place for himself in the world as a writer, but also what does it mean to find a place of care and love and solitude?” -Daniel Dissinger

124. LIVE! From The LA Kerouac Festival at Typewriters Anonymous
(Transcript)

124. The Kerouac We Ignore at Typewriters AnonymousDownload

Inspired Belonging Poetry Workshop: Claim Your Story

Overview:
Come on a poetic journey with Inspired Belonging to reconnect with your authentic self & the stories you’ve always wanted to tell. Get your tickets here!

Inspired Belonging: Claim Your Story
This contemplative & generative writing workshop includes:

  • A series of original guided writing prompts
  • Breathing & Somatic practices
  • Grounding exercises
  • Experiential sharing of your writing

The goal is to courageously explore where your stories live and hide to name truths that may have felt difficult to hold or express.

The Inspired Belonging approach to writing and workshops is to center care as a way of listening deeply to oneself to articulate experiences with honesty, clarity, and compassion and the strength to write the stories that they know need telling.

Inspired Belonging is Daniel Dissinger & Stephanie Renée Payne, writing instructors at USC and published poets & writers who have facilitated their workshops at national conferences, universities, and corporations. Listen to their Inspired Belonging episodes on Dan’s Writing Remix podcast. Register now to participate in their first Inspired Belonging virtual writing workshop, Claim Your Story.

The theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can follow the podcast & all social media: Linktree, join the newsletter/Follow Dan’s Medium & Follow the Substack to watch the full episode videos

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