1st review of Best Behavior and influences on the book

Andrew Worthington wrote a review of Best Behavior.

Andrew mentioned Jack Kerouac as an influence.

The plot was designed after Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Kerouac's On the Road and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

All four of this books plot structure around travel and experiencing things in the new places. But also at the same time there scenes where the characters are at home in the novels. Also they all contain scenes during the travel, going down the river in Huckleberry Finn, in cars for On the Road and Fear and Loathing. I can't remember Jake Barnes being in a train but there were scenes in cars.

The novels revolve around movement. The lead character is in a state of Being, constantly going somewhere, having to get somewhere, on the move. Which provides the pace for the novel.

The narrator is in omniscient first person which I don't think I have seen in many novels. On the Road resembles omniscient first person but the audience usually assumes that the first person knows these things because he has spent time with his characters and knows their histories.

Descriptions of the characters came form reading Studs Terkel books, Hard Times, Working and The Good War.

The long speeches were based off of Richard Wright and Dostoevsky's long speeches they always had. I really like that in novels, when characters just give speeches and say things. I miss that in novels, probably the reason I don't read many modern books.

The stream of consciouness comes more from Proust than Joyce. I don't really like Joyce's stream of consciousness. I really like later Proust in The Fugitive where the narrator is obviously coming from the mind.

There are several types of first person, like Glamorama, it is basicaly third person but told from the first person.

In Keroac and Hunter S. Thompson it reads like a person telling you a story.

But in Proust it reads like a person thinking about what happened. The first person isn't telling a story, but trying to gather their thoughts on certain experiences they have had. I tried to aim for that with Best Behavior.