Iguatu Came across this unintelligible passage in Kerouac’s journals:
where to buy ivermectin online There is a dynamic philosophy behind the Progress of the 20th century, but we need to reach the depths of a Static Metaphysical Admission – a Manifesto of Confessions – as well, or the dynamics will just explode out of control like Kafka’s penal machine. Perhaps something like this should happen: after the age of five, every human being should become a shmoo and feed the little ones; shmoos with wings like guardian angels.
There should be no great shmoos to kick Good Old Gus across the valley. This is not the Lamb, not peace. Even Good Old Gus, at his depths, is standing alone weeping on the plain looking around for confirmation of his tears; and his vanity is his evil. Dostoevsky knew that even about Father Karamazov. (194)
What jumped out at me was the word “shmoo.” When I was a child we used this word to describe a very unusual Christmas tree ornament we had, which looked like a stereotypical alien – smooth skin, large white eyes, nostrils for nose, three fingers – but with white ghostly skin in place of green or blue skin. This alien creature was dressed in pink overalls and a pink Santa cap. No one knew where it came from – it was just one of the tree ornaments, and its name was the Shmoo. I think we presumed we made the word up somehow.
So seeing Kerouac use the word – as a word that had some kind of self-sacrificial meaning, no less – was a surprise, to say the least. It had been a long time since I had thought of the word. Ends up that the shmoo was a creation of cartoonist Al Capp, with strange mythical and allegorical overtones, to which Kerouac is here referring. The plasticity of the shmoo concept made it both controversial and wildly commercially successful.
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