Hey, I'm back, finally finished with the Book of Mormon! This is going to be a quick intro--this post is about the books of Alma, Helaman, 3 Nephi, 4 Nephi, Mormon, Ether, and Moroni. There! Done!
My first few notes on Alma are quotes: "The law could have no power on any man for his belief" Alma 1:17.
"Now there was a strict law among the people of the church, that there should not any man, belonging to the church, arise and persecute those that did not belong to the church, and that there should be no persecution among themselves" Alma 1:21. From what I understand, Mormons are pretty calm towards everybody.
There are a lot of timing problems and things I don't understand. Now, this was originally recording in the mid eighteen-sixties--so of course the author knows about Jesus Christ. Of course, the Old Testament didn't know who Jesus was, so it basically says "someone will come". Now, there's a possibility that when this was or was not dictated, that's what it was given as, and Joseph Smith just replaced it with Jesus... But it's a weak argument and this is, what I consider to be a fatal flaw in giving the religion credibility. I know that seems cruel, but when folks born one hundred years before Jesus are saying you have to wash your lineaments in Jesus's blood... Well, you know. Can't cleanse it through his blood if he hasn't shed it yet! Even if it's a metaphor, it's still incredibly bothersome.
There's also the implication that, at eighty-three BC (the Mormons date big events in their books, which is very nice), it was known that Jesus would be born of Mary. It's probably because of my own upbringing, but I find the fact that this was known by anyone (and so early!) to be ridiculous. Mary didn't even know what was going to happen. Nobody else did. It seems unfair to spread the specific word to some and not all...
"He cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath he a shadow of turning from the right to the left, which is wrong; therefore, his course is one eternal round" Alma 7:20. I think that the word choice is interesting--he literally cannot walk in crooked paths, cannot leave his words, or go to the left (left was considered to be evil for--actually, in some Catholic schools children are still taught to write with their rights if they're a lefty)... Knowing me, you should not be surprised that I thought of A Clockwork Orange--the point of the novel and movie is really the question of what makes a man good (or evil). Alex's choice to act evilly is eliminated--but does that really make him good? His free will has been eliminated so he can't choose... Well, I think you know what I'm getting at. (And in that case, saying his path is eternally round is appropriate!) A few chapters later we are told that he cannot deny his word--unfortunately, since Mormons, when referring to God, don't capitalize he or him, this may just be pronoun trouble--Jesus may not be able to deny God's word, not his own. (I suppose that that's most likely.)
"Now, there is a death which is called a temporal death; and the death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death. The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; and we shall be brought to stand before God, knowing even as we know now, and have a bright recollection of all our guilt" Alma 11:42-43. I thought the bit about the body being brought back perfectly and all of that was the most interesting bit. I also think it's a little cruel to make a person remember everything... I hope you get to forget a lot of it afterwards. It would be pretty unbearable.
"This mortal life is a probationary state" Alma 12.
Later the garden of Eden is discussed, and it says that the redemption plan was "laid from the foundation of the world" Alma 12:25. This is not a new idea, but it is a disappointing and curious one. I mean, why write that fall into the very fabric of existence? At that, it's kind of like, "What's the point at all then, if you're just dooming them from the start?", you know? That always really bothers me.
"And now we only wait to hear the joyful news declared unto us by the mouths of angels" Alma 13:25.
Alma was also apparently in possession of the same healing powers as Christ, 81 years before. Again, this bothers me, most likely only because of my upbringing. One example of Alma healing is Alma helping a lame man to walk again. But that's kind of one of the things that made Jesus so special, right? I mean obviously there's the whole son of God thing, but I figured that's where his ability came from so, despite my unsure feelings towards Jesus/what he was/might have been, it just bothers me that Alma is doing the same thing like it's nothing.
And here's another one! At seventy-three BC: "And those who did belong to the church were faithful; yea, all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them, gladly, the name of Christ, or Christians as they were called, because of their belief in Christ who should come" Alma 46:15. Maybe I'm being close-minded, stupid, or skeptical--but come on! Christianity was started after Jesus. It was named after him. This is literally gibberish to me.
"And we do justly ascribe it to the miraculous power of God, because of their exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe--that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power" Alma 57:26. I just thought that to use taught as the word was interesting.
I also think the use of the word should is interesting.
Here starts the notes on the next book, Helaman--Lucifer is referred to as the "author of sin" (Helaman 6) and used interchangeably with Satan and presumably the devil in chapter six on...
Those who are fooled by him begin to form their own secret groups and gangs: "And it came to pass that they did have their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words" Helaman 6:22. As my bro Ken Kesey would say: "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus!"
I don't understand this passage at all--obviously it's God talking to the people, Nephi to be specific, but... "Behold, I give unto you power, that whosoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus ye shall have power among the people" Helaman 10:7.
"Behold [God] hath put it into my heart to say unto this people that the sword of justice hangeth over this people" Helaman 12:5.
"He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored unto you" Helaman 14:31. My note on this was that this was very Karmic.
My last note is about the Nephites and the Lamanites. Jesus has, presumably, just been born (the date is one BC) and they get mad that the saviour isn't being born among them. At first I was like, he hasn't even done anything yet! Jeez! But then again, these people apparently knew all about Jesus one hundred, two hundred years prior, so yeah. I guess I'd be pretty annoyed too. "Thanks for sending the saviour among them and not us--no, I don't even want him to visit. I don't even care. I didn't even want to be saved anyways!" Yeaaaah.
Next note starts in on Nephi: "And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned" 3 Nephi 9:4. First of all, it should be absolutely no surprise that I wrote "ATLANTIS?" next to this line. Secondly, the 'I' speaking--yeah, that's Jesus. Actually, this seems like it would be another huge problem for Mormons, as they use the regular Bible too--and Jesus is basically a hippie in the Bible. He's probably the last guy in the Bible you'd say would take down a city, even if it's 34 BC (so, probably only a few months at most before he was crucified) and is a little stressed because he knows what's coming. That was kind of weird; it felt more like the crazy storytelling in the book of Revelations than anything else. And if we are to assume that there was a regular Jesus even if he was not the son of God--he couldn't sink a whole city. This is definitely some over-the-top storytelling here.
Jesus also says, after he is the son of God, that he created the heaven and earth. I'm going to say whatever to this because I have no idea how the Trinity actually works.
"Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them" 3 Nephi 14:17-20.
Later Jesus says this to the people: "Behold, my bowels are filled with compassion towards you" 3 Nephi 17:6. I don't even...
Jesus again: "And how be it my church save it be called in my name? For if a church be called in Moses' name then it be Moses' church; or if it be called in the name of a man then it be the church of a man; but if it be called in my name then it is my church, if it so be that they are built upon my gospel" 3 Nephi 27:8. Makes sense, and it would explain Christianity's differences in the actual names themselves except for the reasons I've been complaining about for several paragraphs.
No notes on the fourth book of Nephi.
The next book is the actual book of Mormon. My first note (my only note, actually) is on this passage: And they did not come unto Jesus with broken hearts and contrite spirits, but they did curse God, and wish to die. Nevertheless they would struggle with the sword for their lives" Mormon 2:14. My first note is on how this parallels the story of Job--Job's wife suggests to him that he curse God and die. And--a comparison to Isherwood's A Single Man: "Then to the mirror. What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here's what it has done to itself, here's the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into during its fifty-eight years; expressed in terms of a dull, harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle, a throat hanging limp in tiny wrinkled folds. The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative" (10). George in the book isn't necessarily suicidal, of course--he can "imagine no alternative", but he isn't particularly interested in life either.
The book of Moroni describes elders naming priests and the purpose of baptism... Apparently baptizing children is considered bad as well, not because they haven't chosen, but because they're already "alive in Christ" Moroni 8. I'm not sure if I quite understand that; I'm just going to go ahead and say that it's because it's believed that little kids aren't really responsible for themselves, or don't understand baptism or atonement or any of that yet. I think that's what is being said... (Moroni 8:10-15.)
The book of Moroni--the whole Book of Mormon, remember--ends with a bid of farewell, and the promise that when he meets the reader it will be before "the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead" Moroni 10:34. What does that even mean? Wasn't that a cowboy movie?
That's my last comment on Moroni. I have to admit that by this point I was losing interest badly, so close to the end. Although... At least it didn't end like the New Testament. As fun as the book of Revelations is...
Well! That's it. I finally completed this. (My poor wrists...) I should also mention that there's a handy little index in the back of the book, though I won't be going through it. Sorry.
The Book of Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: United States of America, 2010.
Isherwood, Christopher. A Single Man. University of Minnesota Press: Minnesota, 2001.
Okay... Yep. Next post will be on Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which will probably occur in about a week or so, most likely.
Showing posts with label The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
So, for world religions we had to read a book related to religion and write an essay on it. I wrote rather extensively about The Dharma Bums in the first essay we had to do for the class (a sort of pre-class assignment to describe our personal beliefs) and Mr Stoloff suggested I just straight-up do this essay on it. So yeah, haven't written that essay yet. But I figured this would help me sort my thoughts, or prolong my productivity. Look, it's a little better than saying that I couldn't get my work done because I was playing Pokemon all day--well, that's not all I did. I read Ray Bradbury stories and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and took like three naps. So there!
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?
Wow! There we go. I kind of wanted to add the very end of the book, but it didn't feel quite right to--though I really do love that conclusion. Anyways. Wow. I can't believe it took me this long. It took me like three weeks to finish this post, mein gott. Hmm... I guess I don't have to describe my feelings about this book any more extensively, though. I think you get the picture. Oh! But you know what happened that was really awesome? The Thursday before spring break it was ridiculously nice out, so I went out on one of the benches outside of my dorm and laid out on it to read. One guy (I think his name is Zack?) walked by me with his roommates and they walked right by me, and he stopped and ran back to me and was like "Jack Kerouac--that's that guy that went on that crazy road trip and did mad drugs, right!?" And being that that's a pretty good summary of On the Road, I didn't even say that that doesn't really go down in this book, I was just like yeah, that's him. We talked a little bit about the book and then he realized that his roommates were already at the door to Burr and he ended it with, "Well, I think this is awesome and it's awesome that you're reading this!" It was a really cool moment.
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
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
Thursday, January 6, 2011
The Bible: John, Acts of the Apostles, and Romans
Introductions stopped being needed posts and posts ago...
First up is the book of John, again, a telling of the story of Jesus.
So, my first note has to do with Samaritans. After reading these books, I find myself faced with the age-old question: What the hell is a Samaritan? When I was a kid and I asked that in Sunday school, our teacher skirted the issue because she clearly did not know either. Fairly recently, it occurred to me that Samaritan sounds a lot like Semitism. Semitism is another way of saying Judaism, so Samaritan=Jewish person, which seemed pretty logical. However, there is a passage in Luke that threw me for a loop: "(Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans)" John 4:9. Maybe that was true in those days, but in these days, the two groups are very similar. Considering how Samaritans practice, it seems more likely that this was a human statement by John, rather than an objective statement based on fact...
"But Jesus answered them, 'My father is still working, and also I am working'" John 5:17
Jesus also only feeds the five thousand in John's chronicling of events.
"'The world cannot hate you [the disciples], but it hates me [Jesus] because I testify against it that its works are evil'" John 7:7. Also, according this section, not even Jesus's flesh-and-blood brothers believed he was who he said. (What about Joseph? No further mentions of him after Jesus's birth...)
"'Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin'" John 8:34.
Oh, and the story 'A Man Born Blind Receives Sight'--that gets a 'super-metaphor' status. Jesus gives sight to a blind man? No further explanation is necessary.
Only in John's version of the story is it specifically Mary (Magdalene) who buys the ointment and rubs it on Jesus's feet with her hair. (True story! Yuck.) This is also the only time it is said that Judas was the one who protested her buying the ointment instead of giving money to the poor. After he says that, John adds in parenthesis: "(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it)" John 12:6. I'm going to say that's almost certainly slander.
"'The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may hot overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light'" John 12:35-36.
Only in this version does Jesus wash the disciples' feet.
Also, when Judas leaves, it is said he does so because Satan enters him. That's new, too.
"'How can you say, "Show us the Father?" Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?'" John 14:10. Okay, come on, this is a hard thing for somebody to wrap their heads around, Jesus! It's harder for me to believe that he is in the father as well as vice versa. My brain does not bend that way well. What rubs me the wrong way is that Jesus says, if you can't believe that, then "'believe me because of the works themselves'" John 14:11. That sort of policy doesn't seem right to me... I suppose it's better than not believing at all, but it almost seems like, I don't know, cheating.
Also, in this version, Peter does not weep after he realizes he has denied Jesus three times and therefore fulfills Jesus's prophecy; rather, he goes to warm himself with the waiting soldiers and slaves.
Okay, and maybe I missed this in all four of the books, but that bit about the other crucified criminal who is forgiven by Jesus while they're hanging isn't in any of them. That kind of made me sad. In a weird way, I liked that story.
Acts of the Apostles is basically about miracles performed by the disciples after Jesus's crucifixion.
Now, Jesus heals a lot of lepers and those bedridden. Many more acts of this kind occur in this book, which leads me to wonder about the acts. I can't think of a cure for the lepers that could have occurred through regular means, other than those he made wash (since people hardly washed in those days, it is possible that a simple dip in a river could be enough to remove infection or other impurities)... But those who could not walk: perhaps Jesus was, well, silly as this may sound, a sort of early chiropractor? And before he died he taught his skills to Peter, hence why Peter (I mention Peter specifically because the notes pertaining to this are next to 'Peter Heals a Crippled Beggar') could do as he did. It sounds like a decent hypothesis...
For my next note--it may seem silly to compare this group with a group that wouldn't appear until about 1,800 years later--but I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test before this, so cut me some slack. That book is about Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, a group which would rather reject mainstream society and make their own. They tried their best to live communally while sharing absolutely everything--no money was used, and even norms regarding monogamous relationships were disregarded. (Sounding familiar? Perhaps you've read Heinlein's Stranger in A Strange Land, one of the books that inspired Kesey.) Another thing they attempted to reject was religion, though KeseyLevite... [who] sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet" Acts 32, 34, 35-37. Granted, the Pranksters tried to eject money, but still. Just saying... And while I'm making the argument that I am, cleanliness is next to fordliness, and Ford is in his flivver--and all is well with the world.
Also, according to Acts, Jesus was crucified on a tree.
Romans are also referred to as 'Hellenists', which is rather strange, as that was what the Greeks called themselves. That would have gone into antiquity when Roman became a superpower and super-dominator of the ancient world, but okay, fine...
What I find really interesting is that while Paul is in Athens, he recognizes that the Athenians are very religious, and he commends them for it. He sees, among all the Athenian altars to all the Athenian gods, one that reads "'To an unknown god'" Acts 17:23. He goes on to say that that unknown god is his God, and though the Athenians have been worshiping incorrectly, it is good for them to be so full of faith and spirit, they need only to mend there ways but a little. "'From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and boundaries of the places where they would live, so they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us'" Acts 17:26-28. I absolutely one-hundred percent love this passage.
My next note is from Romans--the full title of the book being 'The Letter of Paul to the Romans'. It is, from what I understand, Paul attempting to educate the Romans in the ways of Christ.
First of all, Paul is referred to as a servant of Christ--though a footnote tells us that in the Greek he is referred to as a slave of Christ! Not sure how I feel about that one...
"Claiming to be wise, they became fools" Romans 1:22.
Anyways, Paul says that in the beginning, and even now/then, people were aware of God's presence and existence through the majesty of the world and its workings that are obviously always surrounding. The people didn't honour God properly, and are basically called idiots in their inability to understand this, and from their misunderstanding created various other gods and deities. (Paul is being a lot harsher on the whole of Rome than on Athens...) And because of this, God "gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another" Romans 1:26-27. Roman men sleeping with other men? Unheard of! You must be thinking of some other empire that was notorious for its, er, sexual freedom.
"All those who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law" Romans 2:12.
"For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart--it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God" Romans 2:28-29. At its base, this is saying, it's the heart, rather, your faith--you could go to church or synagogue or mosque or whatever else you may participate in every Sunday, Friday, Saturday, or whatever day you choose to go, and you could celebrate Purim or Christmas or Passover or Ramadan or Easter or what have you, but if you don't believe it doesn't mean a thing. People will say "What a fine, upstanding person, going to X every Y day, like a good, right Z should", but their words don't mean a thing, you see? It's just a symbol (as would the actual physical circumcision be). The heart is what counts most--and although this does not completely apply, or maybe not at all, I feel compelled to insert this here in relation to that last quote or at the very least what I just wrote: "People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums"--Jack Kerouac
"'Rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die'" Romans 5:7. I'm not sure if I understand what is being said here exactly--the better a person is, the less likely someone is to die for them...? And this brings up what I've been thinking since reading Matthew. Perhaps this is too skeptical and cruel of me--undoubtedly it is--but I couldn't help it: "Martyrdom was to me merely a tragic form of scepticism, an attempt to realise by fire what one had failed to do by faith. No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their heart tells them is not true"--Oscar Wilde*
"The wages of sin is death" Romans 6:23.
'The Law and Sin' and 'The Inner Conflict' are rather intriguing--they voice some very common arguments and problems with religious teachings. (They're both located in Romans 7, and I'll provide you with a few quotes from both.) "What then should we say? That the law in sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet'... Apart from the law sin lies dead" Romans 7:7-8.
From 'The Inner Conflict': "For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh; sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" Romans 7:14-15. That is, by acting good he is acting as he does not want, and in some way, hates it. It also treats sin as a sort of separate personality--"It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me" Romans 7:20--which takes over the body and acts as it wants.
"So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin" Romans 7:25.
"Let love be genuine" Romans 12:9.
"Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer" Romans 12:12. Or, if you'd rather, persevere in hope or faith. Again, it is the heart of the matter, not exactly the matter itself...
"Extend hospitality to strangers" Romans 12:13.
"We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves" Romans 14:7. It goes onto say that we live and die in God, but I like this just as well--if not more--just taken at that face value. It gives me hope.
"Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" Romans 14:23. This I don't like a bit. I think it's quite unfair and unjust.
"The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet" Romans 16:20. Again, this doesn't feel quite right at all.
Well, here we are. You're probably wanting a reaction to Jesus now--I promised I would include one--and I'd be willing to say he was a visionary, certainly. Clearly he was and still is an important figure. It bothers me, though, how flat a character he is. I mean, in Matthew his character bounces all over the place like a pinball, but by John he's just a flat fellow. He doesn't seem human (of course, depending on what you believe, there's a very good reason for that), though his words and teaching do carry a great power, regardless of your religious inclinations. Honestly, this is going to sound lame, but I preferred him in Jesus Christ Superstar (how does one treat a musical's title?)--because he was portrayed as a human with faults and fears. He was scared to die, he was upset that he'd be betrayed, and though he eventually accepted it, he certainly cried out to God about it. Only once in the books does Jesus cry out (in one situation, I mean, this occurs in the the first two books), and that is right before he dies--he cries out, "My father, why have you forsaken me?" Thus reality meets idealism, but, are you getting what I'm driving at?
I really like Romans. It's sort of like a latter version of Leviticus, at least that's how I see it. It's pretty interesting.
*I apologize if this seemed like a rude quote to include, considering what I am implying by including it, but again, I could not help it. It's simply my reaction to what I read.
MLA citation information: Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Edition. American Bible Society: New York, 1989.
Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: What's the Buzz? from the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack (I told you to expect a facepalm!)
This post's cryptic song lyrics: Keep my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds--I'm the arrow, you're my bow, shoot me forth and I will go
First up is the book of John, again, a telling of the story of Jesus.
So, my first note has to do with Samaritans. After reading these books, I find myself faced with the age-old question: What the hell is a Samaritan? When I was a kid and I asked that in Sunday school, our teacher skirted the issue because she clearly did not know either. Fairly recently, it occurred to me that Samaritan sounds a lot like Semitism. Semitism is another way of saying Judaism, so Samaritan=Jewish person, which seemed pretty logical. However, there is a passage in Luke that threw me for a loop: "(Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans)" John 4:9. Maybe that was true in those days, but in these days, the two groups are very similar. Considering how Samaritans practice, it seems more likely that this was a human statement by John, rather than an objective statement based on fact...
"But Jesus answered them, 'My father is still working, and also I am working'" John 5:17
Jesus also only feeds the five thousand in John's chronicling of events.
"'The world cannot hate you [the disciples], but it hates me [Jesus] because I testify against it that its works are evil'" John 7:7. Also, according this section, not even Jesus's flesh-and-blood brothers believed he was who he said. (What about Joseph? No further mentions of him after Jesus's birth...)
"'Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin'" John 8:34.
Oh, and the story 'A Man Born Blind Receives Sight'--that gets a 'super-metaphor' status. Jesus gives sight to a blind man? No further explanation is necessary.
Only in John's version of the story is it specifically Mary (Magdalene) who buys the ointment and rubs it on Jesus's feet with her hair. (True story! Yuck.) This is also the only time it is said that Judas was the one who protested her buying the ointment instead of giving money to the poor. After he says that, John adds in parenthesis: "(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it)" John 12:6. I'm going to say that's almost certainly slander.
"'The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may hot overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light'" John 12:35-36.
Only in this version does Jesus wash the disciples' feet.
Also, when Judas leaves, it is said he does so because Satan enters him. That's new, too.
"'How can you say, "Show us the Father?" Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?'" John 14:10. Okay, come on, this is a hard thing for somebody to wrap their heads around, Jesus! It's harder for me to believe that he is in the father as well as vice versa. My brain does not bend that way well. What rubs me the wrong way is that Jesus says, if you can't believe that, then "'believe me because of the works themselves'" John 14:11. That sort of policy doesn't seem right to me... I suppose it's better than not believing at all, but it almost seems like, I don't know, cheating.
Also, in this version, Peter does not weep after he realizes he has denied Jesus three times and therefore fulfills Jesus's prophecy; rather, he goes to warm himself with the waiting soldiers and slaves.
Okay, and maybe I missed this in all four of the books, but that bit about the other crucified criminal who is forgiven by Jesus while they're hanging isn't in any of them. That kind of made me sad. In a weird way, I liked that story.
Acts of the Apostles is basically about miracles performed by the disciples after Jesus's crucifixion.
Now, Jesus heals a lot of lepers and those bedridden. Many more acts of this kind occur in this book, which leads me to wonder about the acts. I can't think of a cure for the lepers that could have occurred through regular means, other than those he made wash (since people hardly washed in those days, it is possible that a simple dip in a river could be enough to remove infection or other impurities)... But those who could not walk: perhaps Jesus was, well, silly as this may sound, a sort of early chiropractor? And before he died he taught his skills to Peter, hence why Peter (I mention Peter specifically because the notes pertaining to this are next to 'Peter Heals a Crippled Beggar') could do as he did. It sounds like a decent hypothesis...
For my next note--it may seem silly to compare this group with a group that wouldn't appear until about 1,800 years later--but I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test before this, so cut me some slack. That book is about Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, a group which would rather reject mainstream society and make their own. They tried their best to live communally while sharing absolutely everything--no money was used, and even norms regarding monogamous relationships were disregarded. (Sounding familiar? Perhaps you've read Heinlein's Stranger in A Strange Land, one of the books that inspired Kesey.) Another thing they attempted to reject was religion, though KeseyLevite... [who] sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet" Acts 32, 34, 35-37. Granted, the Pranksters tried to eject money, but still. Just saying... And while I'm making the argument that I am, cleanliness is next to fordliness, and Ford is in his flivver--and all is well with the world.
Also, according to Acts, Jesus was crucified on a tree.
Romans are also referred to as 'Hellenists', which is rather strange, as that was what the Greeks called themselves. That would have gone into antiquity when Roman became a superpower and super-dominator of the ancient world, but okay, fine...
What I find really interesting is that while Paul is in Athens, he recognizes that the Athenians are very religious, and he commends them for it. He sees, among all the Athenian altars to all the Athenian gods, one that reads "'To an unknown god'" Acts 17:23. He goes on to say that that unknown god is his God, and though the Athenians have been worshiping incorrectly, it is good for them to be so full of faith and spirit, they need only to mend there ways but a little. "'From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and boundaries of the places where they would live, so they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us'" Acts 17:26-28. I absolutely one-hundred percent love this passage.
My next note is from Romans--the full title of the book being 'The Letter of Paul to the Romans'. It is, from what I understand, Paul attempting to educate the Romans in the ways of Christ.
First of all, Paul is referred to as a servant of Christ--though a footnote tells us that in the Greek he is referred to as a slave of Christ! Not sure how I feel about that one...
"Claiming to be wise, they became fools" Romans 1:22.
Anyways, Paul says that in the beginning, and even now/then, people were aware of God's presence and existence through the majesty of the world and its workings that are obviously always surrounding. The people didn't honour God properly, and are basically called idiots in their inability to understand this, and from their misunderstanding created various other gods and deities. (Paul is being a lot harsher on the whole of Rome than on Athens...) And because of this, God "gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another" Romans 1:26-27. Roman men sleeping with other men? Unheard of! You must be thinking of some other empire that was notorious for its, er, sexual freedom.
"All those who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law" Romans 2:12.
"For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart--it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God" Romans 2:28-29. At its base, this is saying, it's the heart, rather, your faith--you could go to church or synagogue or mosque or whatever else you may participate in every Sunday, Friday, Saturday, or whatever day you choose to go, and you could celebrate Purim or Christmas or Passover or Ramadan or Easter or what have you, but if you don't believe it doesn't mean a thing. People will say "What a fine, upstanding person, going to X every Y day, like a good, right Z should", but their words don't mean a thing, you see? It's just a symbol (as would the actual physical circumcision be). The heart is what counts most--and although this does not completely apply, or maybe not at all, I feel compelled to insert this here in relation to that last quote or at the very least what I just wrote: "People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums"--Jack Kerouac
"'Rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die'" Romans 5:7. I'm not sure if I understand what is being said here exactly--the better a person is, the less likely someone is to die for them...? And this brings up what I've been thinking since reading Matthew. Perhaps this is too skeptical and cruel of me--undoubtedly it is--but I couldn't help it: "Martyrdom was to me merely a tragic form of scepticism, an attempt to realise by fire what one had failed to do by faith. No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their heart tells them is not true"--Oscar Wilde*
"The wages of sin is death" Romans 6:23.
'The Law and Sin' and 'The Inner Conflict' are rather intriguing--they voice some very common arguments and problems with religious teachings. (They're both located in Romans 7, and I'll provide you with a few quotes from both.) "What then should we say? That the law in sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet'... Apart from the law sin lies dead" Romans 7:7-8.
From 'The Inner Conflict': "For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh; sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" Romans 7:14-15. That is, by acting good he is acting as he does not want, and in some way, hates it. It also treats sin as a sort of separate personality--"It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me" Romans 7:20--which takes over the body and acts as it wants.
"So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin" Romans 7:25.
"Let love be genuine" Romans 12:9.
"Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer" Romans 12:12. Or, if you'd rather, persevere in hope or faith. Again, it is the heart of the matter, not exactly the matter itself...
"Extend hospitality to strangers" Romans 12:13.
"We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves" Romans 14:7. It goes onto say that we live and die in God, but I like this just as well--if not more--just taken at that face value. It gives me hope.
"Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" Romans 14:23. This I don't like a bit. I think it's quite unfair and unjust.
"The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet" Romans 16:20. Again, this doesn't feel quite right at all.
Well, here we are. You're probably wanting a reaction to Jesus now--I promised I would include one--and I'd be willing to say he was a visionary, certainly. Clearly he was and still is an important figure. It bothers me, though, how flat a character he is. I mean, in Matthew his character bounces all over the place like a pinball, but by John he's just a flat fellow. He doesn't seem human (of course, depending on what you believe, there's a very good reason for that), though his words and teaching do carry a great power, regardless of your religious inclinations. Honestly, this is going to sound lame, but I preferred him in Jesus Christ Superstar (how does one treat a musical's title?)--because he was portrayed as a human with faults and fears. He was scared to die, he was upset that he'd be betrayed, and though he eventually accepted it, he certainly cried out to God about it. Only once in the books does Jesus cry out (in one situation, I mean, this occurs in the the first two books), and that is right before he dies--he cries out, "My father, why have you forsaken me?" Thus reality meets idealism, but, are you getting what I'm driving at?
I really like Romans. It's sort of like a latter version of Leviticus, at least that's how I see it. It's pretty interesting.
*I apologize if this seemed like a rude quote to include, considering what I am implying by including it, but again, I could not help it. It's simply my reaction to what I read.
MLA citation information: Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Edition. American Bible Society: New York, 1989.
Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: What's the Buzz? from the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack (I told you to expect a facepalm!)
This post's cryptic song lyrics: Keep my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds--I'm the arrow, you're my bow, shoot me forth and I will go
Monday, October 18, 2010
Junky by William S Burroughs
It's actually kind of funny that I should decide to reread this now, as my college is in the supposed heroin capital of the US. (It's also noted for the fact that it has the second highest amount of Victorian houses out of anywhere in the US.) Thus, as you can imagine, this book is about doing heroin, cocaine, and there's a little tiny bit of marijuana use as well... Other drugs too, but we'll get to that.
Okay, here we go, the start of the actual, original text:
So, this is William S Burroughs's first book, so it's not all... crazy. It's actually pretty readable, and really interesting. It's pretty much an account of junk usage over here, there, and everywhere. In our Rebels class an excerpt was presented to contrast Kerouac's On the Road--where Jack set up an optimistic, energetic picture of the time, William S Burroughs was darker, dimmer, and paid more attention to the dirt.
Oh, and one more thing: the version I'm reading is the "50th Anniversary Definitive Edition", so I decided that this time around I'd read all the bonus materials (now that the fear induced by Naked Lunch is fading--heck, I might even reread The Yage Letters--well--no--) included. So if you're just reading along with me, hanging onto every miserable typed word, go out and get this version. I think it's really the only version that's available now, but even if it's not it's probably the cooler-looking edition.
The introduction in the beginning of the book is by Oliver Harris, it was written eight years ago. One of the most important things he says comes on the first page: "One thing you can say about any book by William S Burroughs, however, is that whenever you think you've got it pinned down, that's when it slips from your fingers" (IX). It's doubtful that truer words have ever been spoken. Though a better description of how one feels when reading Naked Lunch would probably be more like: It is forever slipping through your fingers and you will never grab it no matter how much you flail around--and it may just be better that way. But I'd say Harris is definitely correct in what he's said in regard to The Yage Letters. I haven't read Burroughs's other books, but this kind of makes me want to read Queer, so perhaps we'll see further...?
One thing Harris brings up that bothers me is his praising of Burroughs's writing--now, the praise doesn't bother me, don't get me wrong, but what he should praise bothers me. He quotes: "You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere" (X). The point, I saw immediately--it's ironic, because you need what doctors are supposed to have, but if you have it, doctors will trust you--and subsequently, give you what you need. I guess what put me off is that Harris dwells on it and gets so worked up about dissecting something that seems pretty obvious--well, I don't know. It just bothered me. Maybe I'm just like the casual observer as compared to the connoisseur: I know it tastes good, but I couldn't tell you why and thus I can't properly appreciate it. Or something like that.
"Junky did not follow that path of group myth-making, autobiographical fiction that characterized Beat Generation writing" (XV). I can only imagine because it lacks the optimism and vigor (and I mean this about the three of his books I've read in general) Kerouac exercised. When it is more upbeat than "I'm going to make you cry" Burroughs tends to be alone. Well... I guess that's true about Kerouac too, but... There's some subtle difference, though that may lie in my own biases. Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more inclined to read Kerouac than Burroughs, in any case.
Okay, here we go, the start of the actual, original text:
Burroughs starts by describing his early life: "I recall hearing a maid talk about opium and how smoking opium brings sweet dreams, and I said: 'I will smoke opium when I grow up'" (XXXVII). I only bring this up because 99% of the time, opium sleep is supposed to be deep and undisturbed by dreams. Unless if the maid meant that the feeling induced by opium brought sweet dreams after the other effects wore off--I don't know. Whatever, I'm just nit-picking again. He heard what he heard.
"I read more than was usual for an American boy of that time and place: Oscar Wilde, Anatole France, Baudelaire, even Gide" (XXXVIII). Might I point out that all of these authors were reputed to be gay (and some were a little more than reputed). Burroughs was gay, though he practices a very odd dissociation--I mean, you know he's gay, he says he is, he talks about sleeping with other men--but he always refers to other gay men as "the/queers" and speaks of them--almost like a field researcher doing a case study. So, even though you know he's gay, you doubt it, because he sees other gay men as almost not human or a different species. Just kind of odd, I guess.
"I have never regretted my experience with drugs. I think I am in better health now as a result of using junk at intervals than I would be if I had never been an addict. When you stop growing you start dying. An addict never stops growing. Most users periodically kick the habit, which involves shrinking of the organism and replacement of the junk-dependent cells. A user is in a continual state of shrinking and growing in his daily cycle of shot-need for shot completed. Most addicts look younger than they are. Scientists recently experimented with a worm that they were able to shrink by withholding food. By periodically shrinking the worm so that it was in continual growth, the worm's life was prolonged indefinitely. Perhaps if a junkie could keep himself in a constant state of kicking, he would live to a phenomenal age" (XL-XLI). It's not difficult to believe that the drugs would preserve you. Might I mention that Burroughs lived to be eighty-three and Herbert Huncke (a junky who goes by the name of Elmer Hassel in On the Road, and "Hunk" or "Huck" in Desolation Angels, and appears in here and also there in other Beat writings) lived to eighty-one. It's kind of curious, and certainly interesting. On a side note, something about this section reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk--specifically Invisible Monsters when Shannon's ex is describing how every life is just a channel on God's TV and if he changes the channel we die--so we must never, ever get boring.
"I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life" (XLI).
"The effect was uncanny. You would see him one time a fresh-faced kid. A week or so later he would turn up so thin, sallow, and old-looking, you would have to look twice to recognize him. His face was lined with suffering in which his eyes did not participate. It was a suffering of his cells alone" (3). I love the fourth sentence in this, but it needed some sort of context. Clearly this is discussing the affect of junk and the lack thereof on a fellow named Jack--not Kerouac, just a random fellow named Jack.
"In 1937, weed was placed under the Harrison Narcotics Act. Narcotics authorities claim it is a habit-forming drug, that its use is injurious to mind and body, and that it causes the people who use it to commit crimes. Here are the facts: Weed is positively not habit-forming. You can smoke weed for years and experience no discomfort if your supply is suddenly cut off. I have seen tea heads in jail and none of them showed withdrawal symptoms. I have smoked weed myself off and on for fifteen years, and never missed it when I ran out. There is less habit to weed than there is tobacco. Weed does not harm the general health... I once kicked a junk habit with weed... Weed does not inspire anyone to commit crimes. I have never seen anyone get nasty under the influence of weed. Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking. I cannot understand why the people who claim weed causes crime do not follow through and demand the outlawing of alcohol. Every day, crimes are committed by drunks who would not have committed the crime sober" (15-16) et cetera. He goes on to explain other--perhaps you wouldn't call them positives, but at the very least un-negatives, about weed. His one negative fact about weed is that someone high on it is "completely unfit" (16) to drive. Just thought I'd insert them here.
"The American middle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not. Gains went further. He was not merely negative. He was positively invisible; a vague respectable presence. There is a certain kind of ghost that can only materialize with the aid of a sheet or other piece of cloth to give it outline. Gains was like that. He materialized in someone else's overcoat" (35).
"'Herman [Huncke] was a beautiful kid when he first came to New York. The trouble is, he lost his looks'" (35).
"Walking around the city, I spotted several junk neighborhoods... I don't spot junk neighborhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like a dowser's wand: 'Junk here!'" (58).
At one point Burroughs goes to a gay bar--yet another example of him clearly showing his homosexuality (he leaves the bar with a fellow he plans on sleeping with) but yet again strangely disassociating himself from the other gay men there. ...Can I make a poor joke and say that this habit of his is rather... queer? Oh, gosh, I am hilarious.
In this scene he describes himself as getting "lobotomized drunk" (60). There's also some more humor in this scene: "I should have been more alert, of course, but I never could mix vigilance and sex" (60).
"A sick junkie has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait" (72).
At one point Burroughs is in prison for his drugs. The copper refers to him as Mr Lee. When he originally published the book, he published under a pen name--well, a few pen names, depending on when it was being reissued... But my point is (to the best of my knowledge, unless if it was some old nickname for him or some such) that the name Lee--Bull Lee full, Old Bull Lee--comes from On the Road. Just thought it was interesting. Also, I almost wrote 'On the Roast'. ...
On criticizing a hospital's psychiatrist: "He was not effeminate. He simply had none of whatever it is that makes a man a man" (82).
"In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up" (95).
"The meaning of 'manana' is 'Wait until the signs are right'" (95)/ "For the next week that was all I heard, Manana, a lovely word and one that probably means heaven" (On the Road by Jack Kerouac, page 195).
"Once a junkie, always a junkie. You can stop using junk, but you are never off after the first habit" (97).
Burroughs criticizes the "war on drugs" often as well (though I don't believe it was known as exactly that until later) as you've already seen. This image he tears apart isn't that prevalent anymore (I can't even think of the last time I even saw a drug-PSA commercial actually, so maybe it is and the fact that I've watched TV maybe twice in the last two months nullifies my statement), but if you've ever watched eighties drug PSA commercials, it seems that only kids do drugs, and also guys who can change into snakes. "Safe in Mexico, I watched the anti-junk campaign. I read about child addicts and senators demanding the death penalty for dope peddlers. It didn't sound right to me. Who wants kids for customers? They never have enough money and they always spill under questioning. Parents find out the kid is on junk and go to the law. I figured that either Stateside peddlers have gone simpleminded or the whole child-addict set-up is a propaganda routine to stir up anti-junk sentiment and pass some laws" (120). High five, William S Burroughs! Logos!
Page 121: the word haberdashery is used. And it continues to be pretty much the best word in the English language.
"When you give up junk, you give up a way of life. I have seen junkies kick and hit the lush and wind up dead in a few years. Suicide is frequent among ex-junkies. Why does a junky quit junk of his own free will? You never know the answer to that question. No conscious tabulation of the disadvantages and horrors of junk gives you the emotional drive to kick. The decision to quit junk is a cellular decision, and once you have decided to quit you cannot go back to junk permanently any more than you could stay away from it before. Like a man who has been away a long time, you see things different when you return from junk" (127).
Burroughs concludes the original 'story' part of the text with the discussion of yage. He mentions that Russians are also experimenting with yage to see its effects on the personality and the work--namely to turn a person into an unquestioning and obedient worker. I feel the need to mention that Nazis attempted this sort of drug experimentation with cocaine mixed into--I believe--martinis to increase stamina and willingness to work. Oh Stumbleupon, where would I be without you?
Anyways, the 'story' part of the text concludes as such: "Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of aging, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh. Maybe I will find in yage what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke. Yage may be the final fix" (128). Oh hey, lead-in to The Yage Letters. (Though that book wouldn't be published for another ten years, but shush.) ...I honestly can't tell you if it was the final kick or not, because really all I remember is that he talked about an HG Wells story and included a drawing of his that was supposed to be the great being but looked suspiciously similar to female genitalia.
Burroughs includes a glossary at the end as well. "Beat" means to takes money from someone. Special significance then, in the proclamation that "We are the Beat generation"? Not sure.
"Hep or Hip... Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands 'jive talk.' Someone who is 'with it.' The expression is not subject to definition because, if you don't 'dig' what it means, no one can ever tell you" (130). What he means to say is, either you're on the bus or you're off the bus.
Oh, and the glossary reveals that muggles was slang for marijuana back in the day. This shines a whole new light on the Harry Potter series, I must say...
And then several indexes are included.
Appendix I is the ripped apart and reseeded twenty-eighth chapter of the original manuscript of this book. It mostly has to do with orgones (just google it, I don't even know how to simply explain them) and his orgone collection box (which I'm pretty sure is briefly mentioned in On the Road). It also talks more about the constant shrinkage and growth of cells as being that which keeps a man alive for longer--more quotes similar to the one regarding the worm way, way back in the beginning.
"Possibly all pleasure is basically relief from a condition of need, or tension" (137). (The popular version of this quote is "Perhaps all pleasure is only relief".)
"Perhaps the reason for the short life of the American business man is that he experiences no cycle of shrinking and growth. He does not exercise, he is never hungry. His life is a one-way process. When his organism reaches maturity it can only start dying" (137).
"Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life" (138).
Appendix II is one of many of the various introductions to the text. It's got ten facts that prove propaganda 'facts' wrong. "Addiction ruins the health and leads to early death. As I read in a magazine article, 'Morphine addicts have numbered days on earth.' Who hasn't?" (141). Very Vonnegut-ish in tone, if you ask me.
"I do not intend to correct popular misconceptions about junk by presenting the facts that are already known to anyone informed on the subject. I am using the known facts as a starting point in an attempt to reach facts that are not known" (143).
The other Appendixes are various introduction by various fellows. I like Allen Ginsberg, but he cannot do this sort of thing for beans. He's very eloquent--but he cannot stay collected for a solid piece of writing. Case in point, the contents of one of his parenthesis: "a point I argued with as much as I could in his Doubleday office, belt felt faint surrounded by so much Reality... mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors... my own paranoia or inexperience with the great Dumbness of Business Buildings of New York" (155). The ellipses were there to begin with, by the way. But it's kind of like "No, Ginsberg! Focus, FOCUS! Come baaaaack!" He's got a few examples of good focused phrasery, though:
"...Bill was too diffident to make such extravagant theater of self" (154).
"Certainly these books indicated we were in the middle of an identity crisis prefiguring nervous breakdown for the whole United States" (155).
Woah, whooo. We made it. I happen to be rather fond of this book, though it has put in me a fear of needles that I never had, even when I was a little kid. Descriptions of junkies shooting up and blood-filled needles.... Nope, no thanks. It's rather interesting, in any case. I'd suggest a read-through if the subject interests you. If not... Then don't. And don't worry, I'm not a drug addict. Yet. (Remember where my college is!)
Works cited/MLA stuff: Burroughs, William S. Junky. Penguin Books: New York, 2003.
Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma that isn't even really that necessary because she guessed it correctly: Life on Mars by David Bowie
This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: They can't be satisfied, like junkies running dry
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Now I've got my magic bus
I took a break from Lord of the Rings for a book required for school, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. I thought the contrast between them would be way too much to balance. If you know what The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is about, I'm sure you can concur, if not, let me give you a ten words or less summary: Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters trip on LSD.
Ayup. It's essentially a report of their LSD-induced adventures and such. Ken Kesey is the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, FYI, and he was in a test group for LSD. He discovered how to synthesize it and began making more and passing it out to those in his inner circle--soon to become the Merry Pranksters. They acquired an old school bus and refitted it with bunks and a stairway and a deck on top and splattered it with Day-Glo paint and lived in their own little community. A good portion of the book is about their pilgrimage in the bus (named 'Furthur') to New York City, to see Timothy Leary and for Kesey's book signing/publication event of his latest book.
"That's good thinking there, Cool Breeze" (1). Of course, it's the first line. This isn't a particularly great first line (though the way Robby D made it sound great, like when Marky Mark reads Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit selections), but I just like how it's kind of directed out to... someone else. You know? Like dialogue, but seamlessly placed, nay, injected into the text. I feel like Palahniuk does this sort of thing a lot. It seems like something he'd do. Anyway, Wolfe does this a lot in the beginning, but not as much later on, which I kind of miss, there. (Another example from later on: "...Doris Delay, told me I ought to put some more... well, color... into my appearance. That hurt, Doris Delay, but I know you meant it as a kindly suggestion" [16]. I like this one better, I do.)
Pretty early, practically the first time we--Wolfe--meets Kesey, he says that it's time for "the psychedelic movement to go 'beyond acid'" (8). At this point, keep in mind, the use of LSD and such has been growing a swelling for a few years, but Kesey was the first pioneer--okay, it's just now starting to hit 'mainstream', but it's been underground for a while. He's ready to move on, but not the newcomers, so it looks like he's copping out. Kesey's ready to look for something beyond, but his followers think he's selling them short and will turn on him, well, could turn on him.
"'I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph'" (8).
The psychedelic movement is also want followed the Beat movement. "The whole old-style hip life--jazz, coffee houses, civil rights, invite a spade for dinner, Vietnam--it was all suddenly dying, I found out, even among the students at Berkeley... which had been the heart of the 'student-rebellion' and so forth. It had even gotten to the point that Negroes were no longer in the hip scene, not even as totem figures. It was unbelievable. Spades, the very soul figures of Hip, of jazz, of the hip vocabulary itself... all over, finished, incredibly" (10). That is, their time has ended, and now there is this. From Kerouac to Kesey, if you will.
Ah, yes, I feel I should mention that Neal Cassady is in the book, maybe not the most important figure but certainly up there. Neal Cassady, idolized in Kerouac's On the Road. In On the Road he was left in decline, still loved by Kerouac, but--differently. He wasn't quite the idol he had been. However, in this, Cassady seemed to have gotten 'IT' back, at least a little. (He is with the Pranksters traveling, for the record, wild and drugged as ever before.)
"Everything in everybody's life is... significant. And everybody is alert, watching for the meanings. And the vibrations. There is no end of vibrations" (18).
"Whether he is a genius or not, I couldn't say. He certainly looks mad enough" (22).
"'You've got to have some faith in what you're trying to do. It's easy to have faith as long as it goes along with what you already know. But you've got to have faith in us all the way. Somebody like Gleason... he was with us as long as our fantasy coincided with his. But as soon as we went on further'" (possible pun?) "'he didn't understand it, so he was going against us. He had... no faith'" (30). The Pranksters want to reject religion, at the very least the Christian God and trinity. However, they and Kesey parallel Christ or any other religious leader with disciples. You get a very religious feel from them, especially illustrated in this. Faith to create and have something more, something different, and god willing, better. Faith, faith's the word.
"He was from Oregon--who the hell was ever from Oregon?" (34). I laughed so hard when I read this. (But really, who is?)
So, one of the reasons why the LSD is so popular is because it makes you feel like a superhero. There's an added depth when you remember that Kesey discovered the stuff in a 'failed' medical experiment--think Spiderman or the Hulk, you know? Yeah, so he felt like a superhero of a sorts, definitely. "...So why not move off your smug-harbor quilty-bed dead center and cut loose--go ahead and say it--Shazam!--juice it up to what it's already aching to be" (39). That is, take the LSD, and bring your true powerful self to light, reach your full potential thanks to this little miracle, this bitty liquid.
"'Put your good where it will do the most'" (126).
Often, there are references to Heinlein's (sp?) novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. Mostly in that the Pranksters' end goal is to grok--they often say they grok or our grokking--like the main character, Valentine Michael Smith. He was raised by martians, so although human he's obviously been nurtured over nature, and one thing he picked up from the martians is the idea of grokking. To grok is to understand something completely--its physical being, its inner mental workings, everything, completely and fully. For those of you who saw Avatar, think of when the Na'vi princess says to Jake, "I see you, Jake Sully". It's essentially the same thing. Anyway, the LSD gives them, since it opens the doors of perception, the ability to 'grok'. Just--just thought I'd point that out... (And, regarding Stranger in a Strange Land: I hated it. It was a beautiful book 3/4 of the way through, but the end completely ruined it for me, so much so it ruined my perception of the first three-quarters, which was nothing but reverence. So... yeah.)
There is a bit of Joachim Wach's writing on how religions are formed included as well. I'll include a little, and you can decide for yourself whether the LSD culture growing up around Kesey was religious or not. "Following a profound new experience, providing a new illumination of the world, the founder, a highly charismatic person, begins enlisting disciples. These followers become an informal but closely knit association, bound together by the new experience, whose nature the founder has revealed and interpreted... it is oriented toward a central figure with whom each of the followers is in intimate contact... Membership in the circle requires a complete break with the ordinary pursuits of life and a radical change of in social relationships. Ties of family and kinship and loyalties of various kinds were at least temporarily relaxed or severed. The hardships, suffering and persecution that loomed for those who cast their lot with the group were counterbalanced by their high hopes and firm expectations" (128). I guess it's fairly easy to see where my opinion on the matter lies...
"Ne'mind! But Exactly! Don't explain it. Do it!" (188).
"...he; is; GOD It is crazy and delirious and zonked out and real, with half the mesencephalon saying YOU ARE HIGH and the other half saying, Nevertheless YOU ARE GOD" (196).
"Suddenly it seemed like the Pranksters could draw the whole universe into... the movie..." (203). The 'movie', as I've come to understand it, isn't exactly the Pranksters' circle, but... it's a part of them... to kind of be in sync with them, if only temporarily... literally, I guess it would be to have them all filmed with the records of the (bus and other) trip.
"'If society wants me to be an outlaw,' said Kesey, 'then I'll be an outlaw, and a damned good one. That's something people need. People at all times need outlaws" (264). They're our heroes. Our beloved hates.
"I later read about 'imprint' and that it was possible that we would continue to be meaningful to each other no matter what circumstances... I think this is true... the person in question remains very special in my life, and I in his, though we have no contact and see each other infrequently... we share something that will last. Oh hell! There's no way to talk about that without sounding goopy" (275). No, Tom Wolfe, it sounded sweet! And I know what you mean and agree with you!
Kesey, trying to skip out of his charges of marijuana possession, hightails it to Mexico. "Mario is broke himself, but gets off a collect telegram to Manzanillo under Kesey's new alias, Sol Amande. Salamander, you understand--the beast that lives in fire" (327). I thought that alias was quite clever, actually. Back in the day, it was believed that salamanders lived/were birthed from flames, but most likely what they saw were logs on fire and the salamanders rushing to escape, well, the fire. It's kind of like how the Greeks thought weasels gave birth via their mouth. (Oh, Ovid, you silly goose.) But yeah. Because Kesey's obviously under a lot of pressure... trying to duck the law... out of the frying pan into the fire... salamander... well, it induced a hearty chuckle from me, at least.
Anyway, from here on in I feel I should give some background--Kesey is caught between the cops, and former acid compatriots, who have filled in for him while he was away. Like I said much earlier, Kesey wanted to move 'beyond acid', and back in his former stomping grounds he attempts to throw a wild party to prove the acid isn't necessary... The acid heads drawn into the scene think he's copping out, but really, well, he (for lack of a better word) matured beyond it, or rejected it because it swelled into something much too large and wild for him to control--similar to when he goes to the Beatles concert and the crowd is full of wild energy, but there's just far too much to control... well, it's grown wild against him and he's being bitten by those who revered him (not all, but those later acid heads, yes...). Well, yes. So he's pretty much left for the dust, I guess you'd say. Just thought I'd throw that in here. Seems important. (I'm also open to, and would quite welcome interpretations on this.) Anyway, Robby D asked me if I thought he was copping out, and I had one of my famous brain twists--that is, the two halves of my brain both tried to speak and got twisted, and I sputtered nonsense then kind of wound down and shut up. (Spoiler alert: I'm really a robot.) Yes... maybe he was copping out a little... but like I said, he matured... it's not his fault if the others didn't understand... only to them it was a betrayal... But at the same time, to plea for a lesser sentence, and accept it all, 'play the game' I guess, I can't blame the poor guy. I'd do the same in his shoes. Most anybody would--nobody how they criticize or what have you. Bark as loud as you like, it's doubtful that empty courage will last, you know?
I mean, part of what lit his followers' fires (I believe) is that he didn't plead and rap and live up to his ideals and words, because he would have been "salted away for many years" (376), IE, put in jail. And he wanted to avoid it. So I guess I'm just reiterating what I just wrote. Well, hell, I wouldn't want to be put away either. Lay off him.
Oh! Fun fact, before I forget: Apparently, according to Wikipedia, Kerouac was greatly influenced by Wolfe's writing style, best example of this being The Town and the City. (I've yet to read it.) But, reading this, it's very easy to see similarities, especially in the 'spontaneous prose' bit, though Kerouac is the one who really welded it into that true form, or at least he is the one accredited with that. So... yep.
"'...For a year we've been in the Garden of Eden. Acid opened the door to it. It was the Garden of Eden and Innocence and a ball. Acid opens the door and you enter and you stay a while'" (395).
I think the odd thing is, this book made me most interested in Neal Cassady, more than anyone else. In the epilogue, it states that his body had been found beside a railroad track in Mexico. The two stories are that he had been pushing himself too hard and his heart gave out, or that Cassady "felt he was growing old" (414) and basically did it purposely to himself. I want to read voraciously on him now, but it appears that there's no satisfactory biography that exists on him (or not one that's caught Robby D's eye, at least). Supposedly the book Cassady himself wrote is "kind of crappy", in the words of Robby D, but he handed me over two writings on Cassady's suicide. The one Kesey wrote was godawful; it read like a bad Stephen King short story, one that attempts to be sentimental and sweet, but it's just a mess. Bukowski's was a tad more interesting, but it wasn't really what I wanted to hear about, you know? I mean, I guess I won't ever be completely satisfied till I hear Cassady's explanation and of course that's impossible. In any case, I'd like to hear about this charismatic man who inspired the Beat generations through Kerouac and was such an important bit in the Pranksters too--well, he seems a little larger than life, deified, you know? I'm--curious.
Um, where was I? Let's see, I definitely enjoyed the book. What a wild and weird bit of text. Well. Uhm. Yeah, that's about it, in a nutshell. See you soon!
Ayup. It's essentially a report of their LSD-induced adventures and such. Ken Kesey is the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, FYI, and he was in a test group for LSD. He discovered how to synthesize it and began making more and passing it out to those in his inner circle--soon to become the Merry Pranksters. They acquired an old school bus and refitted it with bunks and a stairway and a deck on top and splattered it with Day-Glo paint and lived in their own little community. A good portion of the book is about their pilgrimage in the bus (named 'Furthur') to New York City, to see Timothy Leary and for Kesey's book signing/publication event of his latest book.
"That's good thinking there, Cool Breeze" (1). Of course, it's the first line. This isn't a particularly great first line (though the way Robby D made it sound great, like when Marky Mark reads Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit selections), but I just like how it's kind of directed out to... someone else. You know? Like dialogue, but seamlessly placed, nay, injected into the text. I feel like Palahniuk does this sort of thing a lot. It seems like something he'd do. Anyway, Wolfe does this a lot in the beginning, but not as much later on, which I kind of miss, there. (Another example from later on: "...Doris Delay, told me I ought to put some more... well, color... into my appearance. That hurt, Doris Delay, but I know you meant it as a kindly suggestion" [16]. I like this one better, I do.)
Pretty early, practically the first time we--Wolfe--meets Kesey, he says that it's time for "the psychedelic movement to go 'beyond acid'" (8). At this point, keep in mind, the use of LSD and such has been growing a swelling for a few years, but Kesey was the first pioneer--okay, it's just now starting to hit 'mainstream', but it's been underground for a while. He's ready to move on, but not the newcomers, so it looks like he's copping out. Kesey's ready to look for something beyond, but his followers think he's selling them short and will turn on him, well, could turn on him.
"'I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph'" (8).
The psychedelic movement is also want followed the Beat movement. "The whole old-style hip life--jazz, coffee houses, civil rights, invite a spade for dinner, Vietnam--it was all suddenly dying, I found out, even among the students at Berkeley... which had been the heart of the 'student-rebellion' and so forth. It had even gotten to the point that Negroes were no longer in the hip scene, not even as totem figures. It was unbelievable. Spades, the very soul figures of Hip, of jazz, of the hip vocabulary itself... all over, finished, incredibly" (10). That is, their time has ended, and now there is this. From Kerouac to Kesey, if you will.
Ah, yes, I feel I should mention that Neal Cassady is in the book, maybe not the most important figure but certainly up there. Neal Cassady, idolized in Kerouac's On the Road. In On the Road he was left in decline, still loved by Kerouac, but--differently. He wasn't quite the idol he had been. However, in this, Cassady seemed to have gotten 'IT' back, at least a little. (He is with the Pranksters traveling, for the record, wild and drugged as ever before.)
"Everything in everybody's life is... significant. And everybody is alert, watching for the meanings. And the vibrations. There is no end of vibrations" (18).
"Whether he is a genius or not, I couldn't say. He certainly looks mad enough" (22).
"'You've got to have some faith in what you're trying to do. It's easy to have faith as long as it goes along with what you already know. But you've got to have faith in us all the way. Somebody like Gleason... he was with us as long as our fantasy coincided with his. But as soon as we went on further'" (possible pun?) "'he didn't understand it, so he was going against us. He had... no faith'" (30). The Pranksters want to reject religion, at the very least the Christian God and trinity. However, they and Kesey parallel Christ or any other religious leader with disciples. You get a very religious feel from them, especially illustrated in this. Faith to create and have something more, something different, and god willing, better. Faith, faith's the word.
"He was from Oregon--who the hell was ever from Oregon?" (34). I laughed so hard when I read this. (But really, who is?)
So, one of the reasons why the LSD is so popular is because it makes you feel like a superhero. There's an added depth when you remember that Kesey discovered the stuff in a 'failed' medical experiment--think Spiderman or the Hulk, you know? Yeah, so he felt like a superhero of a sorts, definitely. "...So why not move off your smug-harbor quilty-bed dead center and cut loose--go ahead and say it--Shazam!--juice it up to what it's already aching to be" (39). That is, take the LSD, and bring your true powerful self to light, reach your full potential thanks to this little miracle, this bitty liquid.
"'Put your good where it will do the most'" (126).
Often, there are references to Heinlein's (sp?) novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. Mostly in that the Pranksters' end goal is to grok--they often say they grok or our grokking--like the main character, Valentine Michael Smith. He was raised by martians, so although human he's obviously been nurtured over nature, and one thing he picked up from the martians is the idea of grokking. To grok is to understand something completely--its physical being, its inner mental workings, everything, completely and fully. For those of you who saw Avatar, think of when the Na'vi princess says to Jake, "I see you, Jake Sully". It's essentially the same thing. Anyway, the LSD gives them, since it opens the doors of perception, the ability to 'grok'. Just--just thought I'd point that out... (And, regarding Stranger in a Strange Land: I hated it. It was a beautiful book 3/4 of the way through, but the end completely ruined it for me, so much so it ruined my perception of the first three-quarters, which was nothing but reverence. So... yeah.)
There is a bit of Joachim Wach's writing on how religions are formed included as well. I'll include a little, and you can decide for yourself whether the LSD culture growing up around Kesey was religious or not. "Following a profound new experience, providing a new illumination of the world, the founder, a highly charismatic person, begins enlisting disciples. These followers become an informal but closely knit association, bound together by the new experience, whose nature the founder has revealed and interpreted... it is oriented toward a central figure with whom each of the followers is in intimate contact... Membership in the circle requires a complete break with the ordinary pursuits of life and a radical change of in social relationships. Ties of family and kinship and loyalties of various kinds were at least temporarily relaxed or severed. The hardships, suffering and persecution that loomed for those who cast their lot with the group were counterbalanced by their high hopes and firm expectations" (128). I guess it's fairly easy to see where my opinion on the matter lies...
"Ne'mind! But Exactly! Don't explain it. Do it!" (188).
"...he; is; GOD It is crazy and delirious and zonked out and real, with half the mesencephalon saying YOU ARE HIGH and the other half saying, Nevertheless YOU ARE GOD" (196).
"Suddenly it seemed like the Pranksters could draw the whole universe into... the movie..." (203). The 'movie', as I've come to understand it, isn't exactly the Pranksters' circle, but... it's a part of them... to kind of be in sync with them, if only temporarily... literally, I guess it would be to have them all filmed with the records of the (bus and other) trip.
"'If society wants me to be an outlaw,' said Kesey, 'then I'll be an outlaw, and a damned good one. That's something people need. People at all times need outlaws" (264). They're our heroes. Our beloved hates.
"I later read about 'imprint' and that it was possible that we would continue to be meaningful to each other no matter what circumstances... I think this is true... the person in question remains very special in my life, and I in his, though we have no contact and see each other infrequently... we share something that will last. Oh hell! There's no way to talk about that without sounding goopy" (275). No, Tom Wolfe, it sounded sweet! And I know what you mean and agree with you!
Kesey, trying to skip out of his charges of marijuana possession, hightails it to Mexico. "Mario is broke himself, but gets off a collect telegram to Manzanillo under Kesey's new alias, Sol Amande. Salamander, you understand--the beast that lives in fire" (327). I thought that alias was quite clever, actually. Back in the day, it was believed that salamanders lived/were birthed from flames, but most likely what they saw were logs on fire and the salamanders rushing to escape, well, the fire. It's kind of like how the Greeks thought weasels gave birth via their mouth. (Oh, Ovid, you silly goose.) But yeah. Because Kesey's obviously under a lot of pressure... trying to duck the law... out of the frying pan into the fire... salamander... well, it induced a hearty chuckle from me, at least.
Anyway, from here on in I feel I should give some background--Kesey is caught between the cops, and former acid compatriots, who have filled in for him while he was away. Like I said much earlier, Kesey wanted to move 'beyond acid', and back in his former stomping grounds he attempts to throw a wild party to prove the acid isn't necessary... The acid heads drawn into the scene think he's copping out, but really, well, he (for lack of a better word) matured beyond it, or rejected it because it swelled into something much too large and wild for him to control--similar to when he goes to the Beatles concert and the crowd is full of wild energy, but there's just far too much to control... well, it's grown wild against him and he's being bitten by those who revered him (not all, but those later acid heads, yes...). Well, yes. So he's pretty much left for the dust, I guess you'd say. Just thought I'd throw that in here. Seems important. (I'm also open to, and would quite welcome interpretations on this.) Anyway, Robby D asked me if I thought he was copping out, and I had one of my famous brain twists--that is, the two halves of my brain both tried to speak and got twisted, and I sputtered nonsense then kind of wound down and shut up. (Spoiler alert: I'm really a robot.) Yes... maybe he was copping out a little... but like I said, he matured... it's not his fault if the others didn't understand... only to them it was a betrayal... But at the same time, to plea for a lesser sentence, and accept it all, 'play the game' I guess, I can't blame the poor guy. I'd do the same in his shoes. Most anybody would--nobody how they criticize or what have you. Bark as loud as you like, it's doubtful that empty courage will last, you know?
I mean, part of what lit his followers' fires (I believe) is that he didn't plead and rap and live up to his ideals and words, because he would have been "salted away for many years" (376), IE, put in jail. And he wanted to avoid it. So I guess I'm just reiterating what I just wrote. Well, hell, I wouldn't want to be put away either. Lay off him.
Oh! Fun fact, before I forget: Apparently, according to Wikipedia, Kerouac was greatly influenced by Wolfe's writing style, best example of this being The Town and the City. (I've yet to read it.) But, reading this, it's very easy to see similarities, especially in the 'spontaneous prose' bit, though Kerouac is the one who really welded it into that true form, or at least he is the one accredited with that. So... yep.
"'...For a year we've been in the Garden of Eden. Acid opened the door to it. It was the Garden of Eden and Innocence and a ball. Acid opens the door and you enter and you stay a while'" (395).
I think the odd thing is, this book made me most interested in Neal Cassady, more than anyone else. In the epilogue, it states that his body had been found beside a railroad track in Mexico. The two stories are that he had been pushing himself too hard and his heart gave out, or that Cassady "felt he was growing old" (414) and basically did it purposely to himself. I want to read voraciously on him now, but it appears that there's no satisfactory biography that exists on him (or not one that's caught Robby D's eye, at least). Supposedly the book Cassady himself wrote is "kind of crappy", in the words of Robby D, but he handed me over two writings on Cassady's suicide. The one Kesey wrote was godawful; it read like a bad Stephen King short story, one that attempts to be sentimental and sweet, but it's just a mess. Bukowski's was a tad more interesting, but it wasn't really what I wanted to hear about, you know? I mean, I guess I won't ever be completely satisfied till I hear Cassady's explanation and of course that's impossible. In any case, I'd like to hear about this charismatic man who inspired the Beat generations through Kerouac and was such an important bit in the Pranksters too--well, he seems a little larger than life, deified, you know? I'm--curious.
Um, where was I? Let's see, I definitely enjoyed the book. What a wild and weird bit of text. Well. Uhm. Yeah, that's about it, in a nutshell. See you soon!
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