Shortly after writing that post about "The Scripture of the Golden Eternity," I realized that after twenty years of reading about Kerouac -- probably read a dozen biographies or more -- reading his novels, journals, or other people's statements about him -- I'm finally done with Jack Kerouac.
As I've written previously, I had absolutely no interest in the Beats growing up, nor in my early-to-mid adulthood. It wasn't until when living on the Kitsap peninsula in Washington state about twenty years ago that I truly discovered Kerouac. I briefly worked for the Kitsap County Library and one day happened across a new hardback copy of the volume, "Poets on the Peaks," which was John Sutter's masterful book on the years Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and Phillip Whalen spent as fire lookouts in the remote North Cascade mountains, as well as simutaneously kick-starting the San Francisco poetry renaissance, which led to all that followed in the Sixties. That book opened my eyes.
This was way back in the summer of 2002. So I've been reading Jack Kerouac almost continuously in some form or another for twenty years now. And I've come to feel that I've gotten everything out of him that I possibly can. He's provided me with a lot of sustenance, which I've largely digested. I might still dip into his volume, "Some of the Dharma," which are his Buddhist studies, both for inspiration and also to notice where he ran up against himself and went awry, but for the most part, I'm done. I just finished re-reading "The Dharma Bums" this week.
On the whole, I'm happy with what I've written about Jack. I made my own observations about him, had my own personal insights into his behavior, motivation, and perhaps his destiny, and I've drawn my own conclusions. Not that it will matter to anyone else, but I feel I've absorbed what I have in a personal rather than a plagiaritive (sic; my own coinage, I think) manner. And that satisfies me.
A friend of mine in Michigan who is twenty five years younger has a bone to pick with Jack regarding his chauvinistic attitude towards women. That's accurate. But what I had to say to her regarding that behavior is this: American culture itself -- what we might think of as modern America, post WWII -- was quite unconsciously chauvinistic from the Forties, through the Fifties, and right on into the Sixties.
It wasn't until the late Sixties that I personally became aware that I was suddenly supposed to be "sensitive" with respect to women. The dawning awareness borne of Feminism, long overdue, was finally having an effect. That came on the heels of the wide availability of "the Pill" and women suddenly having control over their own bodies and their sexuality, which had never existed before then. That little scientific breakthrough brought on the sexual revolution and with it, women's search for equality, which still goes on today. I guess it goes without saying that a large swath of American males opted out of the change and are still complete dickheads. It took empathy and intelligence to see things from a woman's point of view.
What contemporary women fail to realize is that early feminism was determined to refute being sexualized by males. It was considered an insult to be seen as a sexual object, something simply to be used for another person's pleasure. Strangely enough, that got turned on its head and instead, some women adopted the worst of male sexual tactics, considering that a form of personal power. Such are the politics of gender and sexuality. But that whole realm is becoming subtly shaded by the dissolving of gender itself.
That guy who wrote the 1970 intro to "Golden Eternity" likened Jack Kerouac's journey to those who choose to live in the subterranean "Underground." All cultures have some version of that. The dispossessed, the shunned members of society. I thought it was brilliant when he made the connection to the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. Stepping outside of the monoculture, one sees things anew, but the method of escape may prove toxic and dangerous. Drugs in the Sixties, for example. I used spirituality as described and elucidated by Meher Baba to step out of the culture I was in, and used that as my measuring stick for authentic values. I think that worked, and still works for me. It's nicely captured in the phrase, found in both Sufi and early Christian writing, "To be in the world, but not of it." That's the ideal, I think, because it will still be some time before the culture at large moves into a healthy arc.
Gary Snyder, who slummed through the underground well into the Seventies, used Buddhism to make his stance apart, and of course, internalized it in a way Kerouac could not. Gary apprenticed himself to an actual Zen master in Japan for many years. In that respect, he was a great example for Jack and that's why he became the subject matter for "The Dharma Bums." Jack was somewhat prescient in realizing the import of Gary's insights and proto-lifestyle.
Having just finished the Dharma Bums, my first thought is that it represents Jack's living -- or attempting to live --according to what in spiritual parlance would be called the "higher mind." This is living according to one's own intuition, empathetically, and reading every event of one's life for its significance in terms of one's own spiritual journey. I've been trying to do that for about fifty years. In some ways, I'm much less sensitive than I used to be but perhaps that's just what life does to one. Experience is a kind of overlay upon one's heart, mind, and internal nature. The whole trick is not to lose who you really are while traversing the ups and downs of life in this world. The world of hard knocks. It's hard to stay open and not shut down. By the same token, it's important to learn from life and not proceed as a naive, hopeless pollyanna. Balance, as always, is the key.
It's a shame that somehow the world washed over Jack and took him out of the vision he had for a spiritual life. But Jack secretly yearned for literary fame and that, I believe, was his achilles heel. It kept him hooked into the world of crass commercialism and ended up subjecting him to the coarse expectations of the shallowest aspects of our culture. He wanted literary stature; what he got was notoriety and the scorn of all the talking heads spouting the status quo of their quasi-intellectual world.
Artists still find much in Kerouac's work and he'll probably continue as a literary icon for the underground for some time. My only concern with him now is the hope that he continues in his own personal evolution, wherever he might be. His potential for growth in that lifetime was cut short by the detritus of fame.
So, goodbye, Jack. You gave me much. And now it's time to take what I've received and continue on my own way.
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