Also, this book is awesome. At first I was all, oh no, what if this ruins my taste for Jack Kerouac ahhh, maybe I should do The Screwtape Letters instead, eeeeek... But then I started rereading it and I was like THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD. Seriously. Fabrizzles always says that if he could pick any book/series to read all over again without prior knowledge so he could feel how it felt to read it all fresh and new like the first time, he'd pick Lord of the Rings. This is the book I'd pick, without any shred of a doubt. I didn't really even get the religious aspects and the full importance of it either back then, I probably didn't really get it until reading it this time, but I recognized that it was important and it still was gripping and revelation-causing regardless, which is pretty darned impressive. But still. Getting those things finally was probably the closest I'll get to reading it like new again. But yeaaaah. That was meant as a testament to how awesome this book is.
So first of all--what the book is about. Well, the book is another pretty much autobiographical deal. This is less of the partying or drinking or depression than it is hiking, and as one would expect from the title, it was written when Kerouac was most enthralled by Buddhism. I say that because he was raised Christian, and in his later works he seems to go back to mainly being Christian with just wisps of Buddhism melded into his personal views. Sooo yeah. I guess I'll be just as plot-vague as usual. AWESOME.
Also, this is the first time I ever read Anne Douglas's introduction to the book. That... That was kind of a useful thing to do. Some things made more sense, and some things were made a lot more confusing.
So my first note is on page two. Kerouac touts some ideas regarding charity, "'Practice charity without holding mind any conceptions about charity, for charity after all is just a word'" (2), and goes on to say that he's become a little jaded and hypocritical, but then he was very devout. I never noticed this retrospective bit before, and it's pretty important, especially when thinking of Big Sur... His retrospective is actually kind of sad, but the fact that he only gives a paragraph keeps it from being as crushing as Big Sur.
On page nine Kerouac declares it would be impossible to compute all the grains of sand on the beach, even if IBM or Burroughs tried. I always thought that this was kind of cute, you know, he thought so highly of Burroughs that he thought he was such magnitudes of genius--but Burroughs was heir to the Burroughs adding machine fortune. So... probably just a reference to that. Aw.
"I sat crosslegged on the sand and contemplated my life. Well, there, and what difference did it make?" (4).
Oh, and Japhy--based on Gary Snyder, sort of the Neal Cassady of this book--is, according to Kerouac, from Oregon. I only mention this because in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, we are informed that this is also true of Ken Kesey, with the note of "Who the hell is ever from Oregon?" (Or something like that.) I don't know, it always makes me chuckle. That and the fact that one of the first people I made friends with in college is actually from Oregon originally.
Thanks to reading Ann Douglas's introduction, I know that the poetry reading on page nine is actually the one that Ginsberg first read "Howl" at. Also, at the very end of the book, when he kind of skims over his stay in the shack at Desolation peak--apparently that stay is the one described in Desolation Angels. Apparently. Anyways, he refers to "Howl" as "Wail" and refers to the night of the reading as "the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance" (9).
"'It's only through form that we can realize emptiness'" (17). Though I may be taking the statement the wrong way, I imagine it's sort of a you can't understand something or something can't be until its opposite exists. For example, you can't be happy--or at least understand being happy--without knowing what it's like to be sad. Otherwise, you're just being, you're not being anything. Or, you don't get light until you get dark. Moreover, you can't have light without dark. They are necessary--both of them--for either to exist.
Japhy tries to ask Ginsberg about his tastes in poetry, Kerouac gets agitated and butts in, saying he knows way more about poetry than anybody in the room (of course, Kerouac was also drinking at the time of this exchange...). It's actually kind of funny, because Japhy proceeds to quote one of Kerouac's poems from Mexico City Blues to demonstrate Kerouac's talent and Kerouac gets even more agitated and claims that Japhy is quoting a poem that's not his. (Because remember, Kerouac is never actually himself in his earlier books. In this his alias is Ray Smith.) Also, if you have the really cool edition with the drawings by Jason (no last name? If anybody has information on the fellow, let me know) on the covers, this scene is drawn on the inside page holder flap thing. Yeeeeep. Eloquence is what I have. I... I feel like I had another point here, but it's gone. So... Let's... continue...
(Maybe it was for a confession time: I think Ginsberg is better poet hands down.)
"'Pretty girls make graves,' was my saying, whenever I'd had to turn my head around involuntarily to stare at the incomparable pretties of Indian Mexico" (21).
"'Smith, I distrust any kind of Buddhism or any kinda philosophy or social system that puts down sex'" (21). Just kind of made me chuckle is all. The context for this is that there's a young, pretty girl at the cabin and they're about to have an orgy and apparently Kerouac--yes, Kerouac--has been practicing celibacy and has been at it for almost a year.
"'Everybody's tearful and trying to live with what what they got'" (25).
There's a bit where they're buying food for the hiking trip up Matterhorn, and Jack insists on buying alcohol. Japhy gets annoyed, he says he's just drinking down the money they worked so hard to save--think of Slim in Pic, using their last dollar to buy a record and not food.
"'Comparisons are odious, Smith,' he sent sailing back to me, quoting Cervantes and making a Zen Buddhist observation to boot. 'It doesn't make a damn frigging difference whether you're in The Place or hiking up Matterhorn, it's all the same old void, boy.' And I mused about that and realized he was right, comparisons are odious, it's all the same, but it sure felt great and suddenly I realized this (in spite of my swollen foot veins) would do me a lot of good and get me away from drinking and maybe make me appreciate perhaps a whole new way of living" (41). What he means by 'this' is not what Japhy said, but the climb up Matterhorn itself.
"...There was something in my heart as though I'd lived before and walked this trail, under similar circumstances with a fellow Bodhisattva, but maybe on a more important journey... The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling" (45-46).
So the best scene in the book is probably when Japhy and Kerouac come back down from the mountain--they go jumping and hopping down the side of the mountain because "it's impossible to fall of mountains you fool" (64). It pretty much summarizes the feeling that Buddhism gives Kerouac, and instead of most books that only tell you how you should be acting if you're of this or that religion, it tells you how you should be feeling. The impressive bit is that Kerouac actually does a good job of displaying the feeling. If you're not planning on ever reading this book, at least read this page... Though if you weren't planning on reading it, I guess it wouldn't mean as much to you/you wouldn't have any interest in it anyways.
"In fact I realized I had no guts anyway, which I've long known. But I have joy" (68).
"'You're just an old anarchist scared of society" (70).
"'You can't live in this world but there's nowhere else to go'" (76).
"Only one thing I'll say for the people watching television, the millions and millions of the One Eye: they're not hurting anyone while they're sitting in front of that Eye" (79).
Okay, so Japhy and Jack come across this woman just preaching about Jesus and Kerouac is amazed by her. Japhy disagrees: "'...But boy have you ever heard a greater preacher?' 'Yeah,' says Japhy. 'But I don't like all that Jesus stuff she's talking about.' 'What's wrong with Jesus? Didn't Jesus speak of Heaven? Isn't Heaven Buddha's nirvana?' 'According to your own interpretation, Smith.' 'Japhy, there were things I wanted to tell Rosie and I felt suppressed by this schism we have about separating Buddhism from Christianity, Eas from West, what the hell difference does it make? We're all in Heaven now, ain't we?' 'Who said so?' 'Is this nirvana and samsara we're in now.' 'Words, words, what's in a word? Nirvana by any other name'" (86). Maybe this only means something to me, but this produced a jaw-dropping revelation for me the first time I read it. I remember reading it for the first time, and it's a big part of the reason why it's this book I wish I could reread for the very first time. I mean--like any teenager I thought I knew what nobody else seemed to get--that if there was a god (if one didn't exist organically, yes, I thought that man would have made one) everybody was worshiping pretty much the same fellow, they just saw him in a different way and had different ways of honouring him. But this--that was just what I thought--it wasn't an infallible truth! Talk about rattling me out of foolishness! Wow. Uh... Yeah. I guess you had to be there.
"All my tears weren't in vain. It'll all work out finally" (95).
"People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism" (100).
"'All living and dying things like these dogs and me coming and going without any duration or self substance, O God, and therefore we can't possibly exist. How strange, how worthy, how good for us! What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was here, it would be immortal'" (102).
"'Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall bring to naught both it and them.' 'Yep,' I thought, 'you pay through the nose for shortlived shows...'" (103).
"I felt free and therefore I was free" (104).
"I was nutty as a fruitcake and happier" (108). I just think that this is really, really cute. Like this makes me want to just give him a huge hug. So adorable!
Kerouac also attempts to explain Buddhism to his mother and his sister and brother-in-law: "'It's simple, let me lay it out as simple and concise as I can. All things are empty, ain't they?' 'Whattayou mean, empty, I'm holdin' this orange in my hand, ain't I?' 'It's empty, everythin's empty, things come but to go, all things made have to be unmade, and they'll have to be unmade simply because they were made!'" (109). His family doesn't understand and think it's downright ridiculous, his sister and mother tell him to stick with the religion he was raised with, Christianity. Kerouac tries to explain some more: "'Everything's gone, already gone, already come and gone... And when things are empty because they appear, don't they, you see them, but they're made up of atoms that can't be measured or weighed or taken hold of... things are just empty arrangements of something that seems solid appearing in the space, they ain't either big or small, near or far, true or false, they're ghosts pure and simple'" (110). This is pretty mind-blowing too, but it makes sense--I mean, things exist, but things disappear. You know? An orange you eat is absorbed by your body, its skin rots away to nothing, same is true for people and animals. Plants die and are reabsorbed back into the earth. Even solid inorganic things break down to nothing--rocks get pounded into sand, etc. (This is going to sound stupid and random, but where do shells come from? Like hermit crab shells and stuff.)
"All dogs love God. They're wiser than their masters" (110).
""I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted" (112).
So he decides that because his rucksack is full and that is spring, he should go to Texas and then through to Mexico. A couple picks him up and "I'd explained a little Buddhism to them, specifically karma, reincarnation, and they seemed pleased to hear the news. 'You mean other chance to come back and try again?' asked the poor little Mexican, who was all bandaged from a fight in Juarez the night before. 'That's what they say.' 'Well goddammit next time I be born I hope I ain't who I am now'" (120). This is sweet in such a painful way.
"'This world is the movie of what everything is, it is one movie, made of the same stuff throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what everything is'" (138). I only include this because it makes me think of Ken Kesey. During the Merry Pranksters' escapades through America in Furthur they had several videocameras recording their 'movie'. (I feel like there's a larger significance to that, but to be completely honest I can't remember.) Anyways, I'm just going to pretend that this influenced Ken Kesey in some way to that end. Ken Kesey definitely read Kerouac and was inspired by him... So yeah, let's say that's how the Pranksters' concept of the movie came to be. Yaaaay.
"'We'll write poems, we'll get a printing press and print our own poems, the Dharma Press, we'll poetize the lot and make a fat book of icy bombs for the booby public.' 'Ah the public ain't so bad, they suffer too'" (153).
"'Japhy, do you think God made the world to amuse himself because he was bored? Because if so he would have to be mean'" (153).
"'I appreciate your sadness about the world'" (154). Japhy says this to Kerouac. I think it's beautiful--and also very curious--a statement.
"'It'll all come out in the wash'" (154).
"'Bad karma automatically produces good karma,' said Japhy, 'Don't cuss so much and come on, we'll soon be sitting pretty on a flat hill'" (161). This another bit of the book I remember reading for the first time with crystal clarity. What originally amazed me was the first bit about just karma itself--I had never thought of it in such a manner, had never drawn the really very obvious connection, and the flash of illuminated (it may sound clichéd, but that's really what it felt like) was amazing. When I first read it, I really only got the first bit, but after rereading it I realized that the second half of Japhy's words is just as applicable and important to the whole. It also sort of reminds me of the headlights quote from Factotum by Charles Bukowski... "''Don't worry, baby,' I'd say, 'the next hard bump we hit will turn the lights on.' ... Jan would bounce up and down, trying to hold on to her bottle of port. I'd grip the wheel and look for a bit of light on the road ahead. Hitting those bumps would always turn the lights on. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but we'd always get the lights on" (96). You know? You hit a bump--it jostles you around and may even hurt you--but eventually something good would happen thanks to it. Bad karma to good karma. You see?
Oh, and while Japhy and Kerouac are meditating under the stars they imagine cavemen from eons before huddled around their own campfire doing the same as "'enlightened monkey men'" (163), as Japhy puts it. Kerouac is awed by this thought and says, "'The stars were the same then as they are tonight'" (163). The astronomer in me has to ruin this beautiful scene for everybody. The stars weren't the same. They're constantly moving in the sky, and in a thousand years constellations will be absolute gibberish. Sorry to ruin that and depress everybody. Moving right along--
"'It all ends in tears anyway'" (164). Japhy leaves for Japan and Coughlin says that he'll be so enamoured with the place he'll never come back, and Kerouac says he won't, and that there was Ginsberg's response.
"But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious" (182). This sounds like something Kurt Vonnegut would say--something with that exact wording, too.
"Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so we were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?" (183). After reading that the time in the cabin that's sort of glossed over is apparently the same time that is described in much greater detail in Desolation Angels, this makes a lot more sense. There are about a million passages of Desolation Angels I could connect this one to... If I had the book on me. Just look at the title though! If you're not seeing the obvious connection being drawn you're not even trying.
"Down on the lake, rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, 'God, I love you' and looked up to the sky and really meant it. 'I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other'" (186).
"To the children and innocent it's all the same" (186).
Also, we were supposed to connect the book with class in our essay on it... I did, but what's weird is that I didn't seem to include what made me further connect Kerouac and people like him to religion in general. Um... that doesn't make much sense. Wait, keep on reading! I'll make sense soon, I promise.
So, our last World Religions class before break featured a presentation on Mormonism. In the class we have set questions that we're supposed to ask the presenters or look up after class, and one of the questions is "What is the religion's view on the end of time?", which is meant to probe at when it is thought it will occur, and how it will occur. I don't remember exactly what they said regarding how it will occur (though I picked up The Book of Mormon so maybe I'll be letting you know fairly soon) but they started describing the first signs that the end is coming, and in doing so he quoted Amos 8:11-12: “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.” I was kind of startled (hence why I don't remember what they said about the end of times itself, I guess.) by that. I'm not saying I believe that Judgment day is nigh or anything like that--but you can understand why it caught my attention, right? I mean--that was what Kerouac was doing. That's what Christopher Johnston McCandless was doing, or at least it seems to have been. That's what I'd even daresay the Merry Pranksters were doing. They had different names for it--but it was still--'it'. There were searching for meaning and something... But yeah. My connection to class--the better connection to class.
MLA citation information: Bukowski, Charles. Factotum. Black Sparrow Press: Los Angeles, 1975.
Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. Penguin Classics: New York, 2006.
Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: We Intertwined by The Hush Sound
This post's cryptic song lyrics: I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast, it might not be a lot but I feel like I'm making the most. The days get longer and the nights smell green, I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave
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