Kerouac: A Psychonaut in Denial
The following is excerpted from the upcoming book All These Serious Faces Will Only Drive You Mad. This is the fourth excerpt to appear on Reality Sandwich. Check out excerpts one, two, and three.
At the turn of the 1960s, Jack Kerouac found himself in a profound state of limbo, representing the climax of an existential crisis that predated his life as a published author. He had been looking for an "answer" to his problems since his early twenties (1), yet for a variety of reasons his dilemma remained unresolved. Then a 35-year-old Jack became famous in an instant when On the Road was published in the fall of 1957, and this led to the total disruption of his already chaotic life. Suddenly his world became very claustrophobic, as he was pushed into the role of a counter-culture celebrity despite the fact that very few were giving him credit as a legitimate author of American literature.
In his 1962 novel Big Sur, Kerouac reflects on the period: "...I've been driven mad for three years by endless telegrams, phonecalls, requests, mail, visitors, reporters, snoopers..." (2). Kerouac wrote that book in October 1961 by fictionalizing events that had happened mainly in the summer of 1960 -- a trip from New York to California, visiting San Francisco, Bixby Canyon, and San Jose (where Neal Cassady was living). It was his first lengthy trip in three years, and Big Sur was the first book he completed since writing The Dharma Bums in November 1957. Kerouac's plan was to pass the summer in solitude so that he could recover his mental balance while checking the publisher galleys for his Book of Dreams (3). Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose budding City Lights imprint would be publishing the dream book that year, told Kerouac to stay at his cabin in Bixby Canyon, on the Pacific Coast south of Monterrey (technically just north of Big Sur).
In the period surrounding both the events depicted in Big Sur and the writing and editing of the book, Jack actively experimented with certain psychedelic substances that hadn't yet made a large impression on the American culture: mescaline, ayahuasca, and psilocybin mushrooms. At the start of Big Sur, he mentions some of these substances in a slightly negative manner, as if to suggest that they had worsened his overall mental condition: ". . . 'One fast move or I'm gone,' I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness which is a physical and spiritual and metaphysical hopelessness you cant learn in school no matter how many books on existentialism or pessimism you read, or how many jugs of vision-producing Ayahuasca you drink, or Mescaline take, or Peyote goop up with---" (4).
However, this can't be the whole story, since Kerouac's letters offer an entirely different view on his psychonautic exploration during this time. Jack first tried mescaline in October 1959 (5), and he was apparently most open about it with Allen Ginsberg, to whom he wrote the following on June 20, 1960: "When on mescaline I was so bloody high I saw that all our ideas about a 'beatific' new gang of worldpeople, and about instantaneous truth being the last truth. etc. etc. I saw them as all perfectly correct and prophesied, as never on drinking or sober I saw it -- Like an Angel looking back on life sees that every moment fell right into place and each had flowery meaning..." (6). This kind of clarity must have been cherished by a guy who saw his life as a long chain of rambling misadventures. Kerouac was even moved to create a 5,000-word "Mescaline Report" in order to document his hallucinations and revelations. He said he intended to take mescaline monthly, and he couldn't wait to test out LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide). In the same letter Kerouac mentioned his intention to flee New York, shortly before Ferlinghetti suggested that Jack use his cabin as an escape. The actual trip lasted about two months, from mid-July to mid-September 1960.
After returning from California, Kerouac had the opportunity to try ayahuasca on October 7, 1960 (7). Ginsberg had just visited South America and brought back some of the liquid preparation, also known as "yagé" (pronounced "yah-hey," but they usually misspelled it as "yage"). William S. Burroughs had done the same in the early 1950s, as documented in his fictionalized letters titled "In Search of Yage" (written in '53 but not published until '63). Kerouac seems to have tasted the real thing, since, according to Ginsberg (writing during the event), Jack remarked, "This is one of the most sublime or tender or lovely moments of all our lives together . . ." (8). That's not to say the experience was only positive. In June 1963 Jack reflected to Allen that, when he would wander into Manhattan for drinking binges, "I come back [to Long Island] with visions of horror as bad as Ayahuasca vision on the neanderthal million years in caves, the gruesomeness of life!" (9).
A few months after Kerouac's ayahuasca trip, in January 1961, he ingested capsules containing the extract of what he called "Sacred Mushrooms" (10), a nickname for psilocybin (11). Ginsberg had recently visited Timothy Leary at Harvard to participate in Leary's soon-to-be-controversial psychedelic studies. Ginsberg brought the capsules back to New York to distribute to various people, and Kerouac went to Allen's Manhattan apartment to try them for himself (12). Kerouac's reaction to this experience is recorded in a letter he sent to Timothy Leary later that month (known as the "Dear Coach" letter). Jack wrote, "Mainly I felt like a floating [Genghis] Kahn on a magic carpet with my interesting lieutenants and gods... some ancient feeling about old geheuls [sic] in the grass, and temples, exactly also like the sensation I got drunk on pulque (13) floating in the Xochimilco gardens on barges laden with flowers and singers... some old Golden Age dream of man, very nice" (14).
Kerouac's final experiment of this period came in December 1961 (as least, according to the published literature). It's fairly evident that on this occasion Kerouac ingested actual dried psilocybin mushrooms instead of capsules (15).
During the writing of Big Sur, some of these psychedelic experiences crept into the book despite Kerouac's initial statement about "metaphysical hopelessness." Upon awaking from a bizarre dream sequence, "Jack Duluoz" (Kerouac's fictional projection of himself) reflects on the "millionpieced mental explosions that I remember I thought were so wonderful when I'd first seen them on Peotl and Mescaline...broken in pieces some of them big orchestral and then rainbow explosions of sound and sight mixed" (16). The "peotl" (or "peyotl," the indigenous spellings of "peyote") cactus has long been consumed by tribes in northern Mexico and the American southwest for the psychoactive mescaline it contains (17).
Kerouac first encountered peyote eight years before his trip to Bixby Canyon, while living with Burroughs in Mexico City in 1952. The two embarked on a fruitful series of peyote trials that Kerouac described in his letters to friends back in the United States. On March 12 of that year, Jack wrote to John Clellon Holmes about what was possibly his first full-on psychedelic experience, conveying "the wild visions of musical pure truth I got on peotl (talk about your Technicolor visions!)..." (18). Shortly thereafter, on June 5, Kerouac wrote again to Holmes, telling of the time when a few "young American hipsters" gave him and Burroughs some peyote, after which the duo walked around Mexico City at night. In a park Jack found himself "wanting to sit in the grass and stay near the ground all night by moonlight, with the lights of the show and the houses all flashing, flashing in my eyeballs..." (19).
This letter is important for another reason; in it Jack explains the thrill of writing with his new "sketching" style, an early conception of what he would later call "spontaneous prose." Late in October 1951, Kerouac's friend Ed White had suggested that Jack try to write as though he was painting a scene (20). Kerouac told Holmes he was "beginning to discover...something beyond the novel and beyond the arbitrary confines of the story . . . into the realms of revealed Picture . . . revealed whatever . . . revealed prose . . . wild form, man, wild form. Wild form's the only form holds what I have to say -- my mind is exploding to say something about every image and every memory in -- I have now an irrational lust to set down everything I know -- in narrowing circles..." (21).
The strong parallel between the "rainbow explosions" Kerouac saw on mescaline and peyote, and the feeling that he was "exploding" to describe his thoughts about reality, suggests that Jack's psychedelic exploration in 1952 had a decisive influence on what would become his trademark prose style.
Big Sur generally depicts Kerouac's brush with "insanity" as stemming from his alcoholism. There's hardly a time in the book when "Duluoz" is not holding a bottle of whiskey or wine. But as the story progresses, some of the descriptions seem to fall way outside the scope of what alcohol can do to a person's mind and one's perception of reality. For instance, when Jack's friends try to get him to eat some food, he's too distracted by his mental aberrations. "Masks explode before my eyes when I close them, when I look at the moon it waves, moves, when I look at my hands and feet they creep---Everything is moving, the porch is moving like ooze and mud, the chair trembles under me" (22). Notice again the mention of "explosions." Or examine the aforementioned dream sequence, in which Jack sees numerous "Vulture People" copulating in a trash dump. "Their faces are leprous thick with soft yeast but painted with makeup...yellow pizza puke faces, disgusting us...we'll be taken to the Underground Slimes to walk neck deep in steaming mucks pulling huge groaning wheels (among small forked snakes) so the devil with the long ears can mine his Purple Magenta Square Stone that is the secret of all this Kingdom---" (23).
Even a glance at Kerouac's Book of Dreams makes it obvious that he frequently had extraordinary night-visions. But such passages really bring to mind a few specific things: the psychedelic experience, existentialist literature, and the rare cases in which the two are combined. Though Kerouac more often talked of his fondness for Dostoevsky than for later existentialists, Jean-Paul Sartre's 1938 novel Nausea (not published in English until 1949 [24]) is an indubitable precursor to Big Sur. Nausea contains a first-person journal-style account by a French man named Roquentin, who unexpectedly becomes overtaken by mortal horror and bodily uneasiness. As Roquentin says early in the novel, "Then the Nausea seized me, I dropped to a seat, I no longer knew where I was; I saw the colours spin slowly around me, I wanted to vomit. And since that time, the Nausea has not left me, it holds me" (25).
There's a deeper connection between the two novels as well. In his 2002 book Breaking Open the Head, Daniel Pinchbeck reports that Sartre tried mescaline in 1935 as a research subject in Paris. Pinchbeck writes that "long after the physical effect of the drug had worn off, Sartre found himself plunged into a lingering nightmare of psychotic dread and paranoia; shoes threatened to turn into insects, stone walls seethed with monsters" (26). Pinchbeck infers that this influenced the writing of Nausea -- but he thought Sartre's affliction lasted about a week. Actually Sartre experienced hallucinations of shellfish (usually lobsters, but he also called them crabs) for years, according to a 2009 book of conversations between Jean-Paul and John Gerassi, whose parents were close friends with Sartre. Gerassi quotes Sartre saying, "Yeah, after I took mescaline I started seeing crabs around me all the time. They followed me in the streets, into class... I would wake up in the morning and say, 'Good morning, my little ones, how did you sleep?' " (27).
In 1954, thanks to Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, the Western world became much more aware of the potential promise of mescaline as a visionary aid. But interspersed with descriptions of his wondrous hallucinations, Huxley cautioned not to place too much expectation on mescaline for spiritual enlightenment (28). Still, the book was extremely influential in the literary world, and it paved the way for the psychedelic uprising that Leary and others would lead in the 1960s.
So it's a bit surprising that someone in Kerouac's position, writing a book like Big Sur in 1961, wouldn't emphasize psychedelics more or even try to work them into the plot, if only through a flashback or some similar device. Not only did he largely leave them out of the book, but he actually downplayed the way they had guided his own "mysticism" -- something that, in retrospect, is clearly evident in books from his "Duluoz Legend" (as he called his oeuvre of semi-autobiographical fiction) such as On the Road (published in 1957), The Dharma Bums (1958), and Visions of Gerard (1963). Kerouac even amended the line about "the mad ones" early in Road that would become his most famous quote, and -- perhaps not unexpectedly -- the final wording seems influenced by his 1952 peyote experiments. In the 1951 "scroll" version (not published until 2007) it read "burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night" (29). But in the 1957 version, the line went "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop..." (30).
It all seems even more suspicious after learning that mescaline actually renewed Jack's faith in his unique prose style in 1959, just as peyote seems to have inspired the style initially in 1952. Soon after taking mescaline, Kerouac told Ginsberg that during the trip he'd had "the sensational revelation that I've been on the right track with spontaneous never-touch-up poetry of immediate report..." (31). Kerouac's "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" held that writing should be "confessional," "always honest," and-the part most tied up with myths about Kerouac-have "no revisions" (32). We've already seen one case where Kerouac revised a work that he claimed to be an entirely spontaneous composition. So one can't help but wonder-was Kerouac being as honest as he claimed in his prose theory?
Other information in the "Dear Coach" letter helps to answer the question of why Kerouac would downplay psychedelics in his fiction and public statements. As he told Leary, "It was a definite Satori. Full of psychic clairvoyance (but you must remember that this is not half as good as the peaceful ecstacy [sic] of simple Samadhi trance as I described that in Dharma Bums)" (33). Kerouac intended for The Dharma Bums to be read as a resolution to the existential conflict so visible in earlier books like On the Road and The Subterraneans. He also hoped for it to be a life manual for anyone in a similar situation, because in the mid- to late-1950s he viewed Buddhism as "the answer." In other words, Kerouac perceived the potential rise of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s as a threat to the usefulness of his own body of work. In turn, his disparagement of psychedelics -- and his silence (outside of private letters) about their potential advantages -- was propaganda for the Duluoz Legend.
In fact, Kerouac found little use for Buddhism in his personal life by the start of the Big Sur period. His devout Catholic family had been fighting him about it for years. And as he told Carolyn Cassady after writing Big Sur -- specifically referring to the end of the book, which describes his mental breakdown -- "I realized all my Buddhism had been words -- comforting words, indeed" (34). Despite that, he still made Desolation Angels a sort of sequel to Dharma Bums a few years later, keeping much of the Buddhist terminology in place.
This differs substantially from the idea espoused by many of Kerouac's biographers, who took a line of recorded conversation in the "Dear Coach" letter ("walking on water wasn't built in a day") as a sign that Jack saw very limited value in psychedelics. As it turns out, Kerouac's literary treatment of psychedelics is one of many routes to a rude awakening about the Duluoz Legend, showing that it's far less "objectively" true than commonly thought. In Big Sur, Kerouac wanted the cause of his mental breakdown to be alcoholism fueled by fame and "mortal existence," not a spiritual awakening (or re-awakening) inspired by psychedelics.
We can deduce this by looking at Kerouac's October 1961 letter to Ferlinghetti, whom Jack actually visited again in San Francisco before returning to the East Coast in September 1960. As Kerouac writes, "...I was going to have lots more at the 'end' when I come to your house 706 but suddenly saw the novel should end at the cabin..." (35). So Big Sur ends the way it does because of a literary decision that Kerouac made, not necessarily because it depicts the way the events "objectively" happened.
Kerouac wasn't only deceiving his readership; he was deceiving himself. His unwillingness -- or his inability -- to revise his view of reality and existence according to his own subjective life experience led to his early death in 1969. Just as a butterfly transforms from a caterpillar, he could have emerged from his chrysalis a twice-born being. The story behind Big Sur shows that Kerouac had the opportunity to progress through his existential crisis and live an entirely new life of liberation and prosperity. His loss need not be our own.
This excerpt was originally published as a longer essay in Beatdom Magazine under the title "Death Within A Chrysalis."
NOTES:
1. Kerouac, Jack. Windblown World. Ed. by Douglas Brinkley. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. pp. 61-66.
2. Kerouac, Jack. Big Sur. 1962. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. p. 4.
3. Kerouac, Jack. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. Ed. by Ann Charters. 1999. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. pp. 296-297.
4. Kerouac, J. Big Sur. pp. 7-8. Long ellipsis was in original; short ellipsis is mine.
5. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. pp. 252-253.
6. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. p. 292.
7. Maher Jr., Paul. Kerouac: His Life and Work. 2004. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2007. p. 414.
8. Maher Jr., P. Ibid. p. 415. Ellipsis was in original.
9. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. p. 419.
10. In both the second volume of Selected Letters and Kerouac: A Biography, Charters writes erroneously that Kerouac took LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) in January 1961. In the biography she also mistakenly states that Kerouac went to Cambridge, Mass., to see Leary.
11. "Psilocybin Mushrooms." Erowid. Accessed on 6/4/2011. http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms.shtml
12. Lee, Martin A. and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond. 1985. New York: Grove Press, 1992. pp. 78-82. Note: they mistook Northport as being in Massachusetts, instead of Long Island, New York.
13. An alcoholic Mexican drink made of fermented agave. See: "The Spirits of Maguey" by Fire Erowid. Erowid. Nov 2004. Accessed on 6/14/2011. http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/alcohol/alcohol_article1.shtml#pulque
14. Kerouac, Jack. "Dear Coach: Jack Kerouac to Timothy Leary." Acid Dreams Document Gallery. Website for the book Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. Ellipses were in original. Accessed on 3/3/2011. http://www.levity.com/aciddreams/docs/dearcoach.html
15. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. p. 363.
16. Kerouac, J. Big Sur. p. 211.
17. "Peyote." Erowid. Accessed on 6/6/2011. http://www.erowid.org/plants/peyote/peyote.shtml
18. Kerouac, Jack. Selected Letters, 1940-1956. Ed. by Ann Charters. 1995. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. p. 336.
19. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1940-1956. pp. 368-369.
20. Charters, A. Ibid. pp. 139-140.
21. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1940-1956. p. 371. Long ellipses were in book; short ellipsis is mine.
22. Kerouac, J. Big Sur. p. 200.
23. Kerouac, J. Big Sur. pp. 208-210.
24. "Nausea." Wikipedia. Accessed on 6/6/2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea_%28novel%29
25. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. 1938. New York: New Directions, 1964. p. 18-19.
26. Pinchbeck, Daniel. Breaking Open the Head. New York: Broadway Books, 2002. p. 122.
27. Allen-Mills, Tony. "Mescaline left Jean-Paul Sartre in the grip of lobster madness." The Sunday Times of London. 11/22/2009. Ellipsis was in original. Accessed on 10/31/2010. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6926971.ece
28. Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell. New York: Perennial, 2004. p. 41.
29. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road: The Original Scroll. New York: Viking, 2007. p. 113.
30. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. 1957. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. pp. 5-6.
31. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. p. 363. pp. 252-253.
32. Kerouac, Jack. "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose." The Portable Beat Reader. Ed. by Ann Charters. New York: Viking, 1992. pp. 57-59. Italics were in original.
33. Kerouac, J. "Dear Coach: Jack Kerouac to Timothy Leary."
34. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. p. 353.
35. Kerouac, J. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. p. 358.
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I must say that your
Re: I must say that your...
So many assumptions and generalizations. I didn't say that psychedelics were the biggest or most important inspiration for Kerouac's "spontaneous prose" style; I said that they are the part most consistently omitted from biographical accounts of Keroauc. I'm aware that Kerouac constantly cited Neal Cassady's letters as the foundation of his fiction style. However, I read those letters in Cassady's collected correspondence, and to me they didn't seem all that related to Kerouac's style. I think Kerouac mentioned Cassady and Burroughs as inspirations because they reinforced his own books. What I mean is, Kerouac turned real-life people into larger-than-life stories. If he built up the idea that the "characters" in his books were also the spark behind his literary style, then it made the "Duluoz Legend" seem more legitimate as a recording of an actual cultural movement.
As for Buddhism, I address that in a separate excerpt appearing in Beadtom Magazine issue 10 within the next month or so: http://beatdom.com -- A quote: "... [Kerouac] mistook religious myths (Eastern and Western) for literal truth, instead of what they actually are: symbolic descriptions of natural processes, both physical and metaphysical. This is the essence of fundamentalism: defending a literal interpretation of religious texts. Stated a different way, he invested too much in words, while mostly missing out on the subjective experience to which the words refer."
Honestly I think many of your concerns will dissolve once you see the broader work that produced this excerpt. I don't have a "prejudice" or pre-established agenda here. I was a die-hard Kerouac fan who came to feel that his works were more like prison bars than wings of liberation. Like you, I didn't want to consider that he might have lied (or been dishonest through half-lies). But he argued that his "Duluoz Legend" was totally true -- so if we catch him lying (which I have), it means we must subject every word he wrote to scrutiny. I've found evidence suggesting that he was not just an occasional lyer, but a chronic one.
Still, I don't make any claims about him that aren't extensively backed up by dependable sources. I'm well aware that I'm treading on "sacred" ground. But I'd never be so arrogant as to call you a "self-deceived fool," as you have apparently done to me.
I may have made assumptions
I may have made assumptions both towards you and Kerouac, but what I said in direct reference to you was coming straight from what I interpreted of your article based on what I knew and knew-not of who Kerouac was and intended to be. My criticism towards you is mostly in that you take a collection of letters written by Kerouac, personally interpret them from your own subjective view point, which is based on what seems to me to be clearly your pre-judice that psychedelics have more positive than negative effects, (a pre-judice of which I myself hold), and then criticize Kerouac for not being "objective" when you yourself were not being "objective". I had not claimed you said "psychedelics were the biggest or most important inspiration for Kerouac" as you thought I did; rather you said in your article "It all seems suspicious after learning that mescaline actually renewed his faith in his unique prose style in 1959, just as peyote seems to have inspired the style initially", which if you go back to my original response you will see that I made the point that Kerouac's writing may have been inspired by psychedelics but was originally inspired by a letter Neal Cassady had written, which was not his collection of published letters, but rather was a 40,000 word letter, a letter which in a Paris Review interview Kerouac had reported he leant to Allen Ginsberg who had leant it to a guy named Gerd Stein who had lost the letter; so neither you nor I have read the supposed letter---but I must admit: I was wrong to assume that one letter was the initial source of inspiration, as everyone has many different sources of inspiration. Now maybe I mis-interpreted what you intended to mean in the passage from your article I quoted above, or maybe you mis-wrote the order of the words to wherein you say "initially" you did not mean to say Kerouac's peyote experience in 1952 was the initial source of inspiration; but I interpreted that passage as you meaning Kerouac's peyote experience in 1952 was the initial source of inspiration.
I respect that your writing project is aimed at being non-fictional with your leaning more towards "truth" than "fiction", which would probably offer a more knowledgeable perspective towards experiences such as ones catalyzed by psychedelics; but where the line exists that separates "truth" from "fiction" is not clear (if it even exists at all); and that's where I believe Kerouac may have been coming from as a writer: seeing existence to be nothing more nor less then one grand epic poem. You're probably right that Kerouac projected the idea onto his characters that they were responsible for inspiring his literary style, this I'm sure did have something to do with his strategy as a writer to purposefully create some sense of a new rising literary and cultural revolution (which his writing did influentially bring about), as I 'm sure that he projected that idea onto his characters also because they truly were inspirations to him (as any person would be inspired by their close and cherished friends).
You are right that I'm a fan of Kerouac, but that doesn't really go beyond what I know of him as a writer; and I agree with you that some of Kerouac's work in content has an imprisoning sense, though, his writing style is far from imprisoned by normal literary standards of the time that Kerouac began publishing, and maybe his writing was to him, (at least when he was young, as he had said in interviews when he was older that he grew distasteful towards writing), was a time where he could be free from "rules" of life and death, of which, as it sounds in his writing, he struggled to accept and deal with in much of any other way then getting drunk and of course writing.
I agree with you that Kerouac, based on what I've read in his writings, probably took religious texts far more serious than he should have; but I also know that some people struggle so much with accepting uncertainty that they'll believe any story in order to give themselves a sense of, as false it may be, security; though I don't think anyone should interpret descriptions in metaphysics as either literal or symbolic, seeing how metaphysics inherently deals with abstract ideas that are definitely not literal in physics, nor are they intended to be symbolic myths. I'm not concerned with whether Kerouac told "lies" or told the "truth"; considering he is a writer, more specifically known as a poet and auto-fictional novelist, I have never nor will never read Kerouac's work with the expectation that his writing is the recordings of what "actually" happened. When I say Kerouac was being honest I mean that as in he being honest as a writer: someone who just by reading their writing can feel the writer put a whole lot of real raw genuine feeling into it. The mere notion that his name as a novelist is "Duluoz Legend" I take as that: a legend; even if it appears in text, (as it does in all fundamental religious texts), to be written as "truth".
It is fair for you to assume that I called you a self-decieved fool, as I did hint towards that. To be fair: I didn't call you a self-decieved fool but rather left it for you to reflect on and to decide for yourself. My defending Kerouac has more to do with my defense for writing and literature than it does for Kerouac; though, I must admit I do like Kerouac, so I'm leaving open the possibility that maybe I'm the self-decieved fool who's drowning in my own self-righteousness. But I don't care if I'm right in any of what I've said...I just don't necessarily think your right; but that's just what I think, which comes from my own individual view point; to which is the only real criticism I have of your article: that being your article is an attempt to present yourself as being "objective" when in actuality your offering your own personal interpretation, which you as anyone else have the "authority" to do; but in my opinion: your mistake lies in confusing your own personal view point with "objectivity". I do wish you well with your writing, and if you want to stay true as a writer then I'd advise you to not care in the least bit of what I have to say in regards to your writing, for only you know what you know.
Gratitude for your well-reasoned defense
Re: Gratitude
Lulie,
I don't believe -- nor do I say in the excerpt above -- that psychedelics alone can create a metamorphosis in a person. Otherwise Kerouac would have survived... correct? But they clearly spur people to live in more creative, fulfilled ways. Many resist that push, and Kerouac was one of them.
The butterfly metaphor relates to other things going on in his life as well -- things that I address in this chapter of my book. Kerouac was also exploring his unconscious in other ways, such as keeping a dream journal. But the exploration only went up to a point in any of the areas. His "non-acceptance" of psychedelics was only one way in which he refused to take the necessary steps to resolve his ongoing existential crisis. His terror of the psychedelic experience was really a terror of his total Self.
Thanks for reading.
Re: I may have made assumptions
Dark Angel,
First, I didn't say that psychedelics have more positive than negative effects. I described the effect that psychedelics seem to have had on Kerouac's life and writing. In his life he clearly deemed those effects both "positive" and "negative" -- but those are subjective evaluations. At the same time, it seems that he felt psychedelics had only a "positive" effect on his writing. So that's what I mean when I say psychedelics influenced his "spontaneous prose" style; as I wrote in a thread below, it appears that they provided a mystical energy that allowed him to live out his theory (after trying peyote in 1952). He had been thinking about the prose theory since the mid-1940s.
Second, I didn't claim that my report is "objective" in the sense that I haven't expressed my own opinions. It seem that you misintepreted some of my final statements about the "Duluoz Legend." I was trying to explain that, when publishers, reporters, and biographers call it "semi-autobiographical fiction" and imply that it's a "true" reflection of his "real" life, most readers take that to mean it is a more or less "objective" account in the journalistic sense. That means that no important details were omitted, altered, or completely fabricated. However, in the "Duluoz Legend," a lot of very relevant information is omitted. This is a form of lying -- telling "half-truths." It's part of the reason that we can no longer tell when someone is or is not being genuine -- whether someone is or is not trying to con us. It's the basis of propaganda and public relations. In short, I'm standing up for my right to have transparency in the powerful figures and offices of our society. (I explore the public relations industry and argue that human objectivity is not yet [or not fully] possible in other RS excerpts.)
I think you have a good point about Kerouac's wish to compose "one grand epic poem." Yes, Kerouac called it a "Legend." But he also insisted that that he never reported things differently than they happened. Even in his first biography, Charters reports that Kerouac sometimes made minor changes, omissions, or rearrangements. We're usually told that these were for legal reasons; I've found evidence to the contrary. According to Charters, Kerouac's friend Gary Snyder said that The Dharma Bums (the "hero" of which was based on Snyder) should be viewed as a "freely embellished work of Jack's imagination" (paraphrasing; I quote him in the upcoming Beatdom essay).
Third, I wasn't talking about the branch of "philosophy" called "metaphysics." By "metaphysical" I meant the non-physical parts of the human existential experience -- which relate to some symbols contained in what we call "religion." In my book I cite Carl Jung, Alan Watts, and Joseph Campbell, at least, who all say that mythology (religious or secular), fairy tales, and other "timeless" stories can only be read symbolically. Anyway, that's a different excerpt and a different discussion.
I can see why concerns would arise from this essay. I'll be extra careful about my wording in the final version of the book.
The division of days
I came out of the shell station, into the 8 forked road. It was a rough journey just to get from my damn house in Cali to this place. People are telling me I should just ride a bike and spare the dead ancestors the term oil. But I was too shellfish to be so exposed. I preferred the comfortable interiors to my oldsmobile, also its a long distance on a bike, unless its in a bus compartment. But they had security in those now, and I couldn't shoot shit at my leisure. When I hit the gas I feel the burn, the angina sets in a again and the palpitations get too much. Internal combustion they called it. To me it was all the cycling of the 4 wheels. With every rotation progress is made towards the destination; but not without loss and degradation.
No this fucker was special to me. I put the purple dingo balls on the ceiling with Butch and Mechelle. I remember a day, from flanders field to Kandahar. That black tar on the highway from nowhere to sickness then death. This was going to be a hellride to remember...
The hourglass on the dashboard was growing emptier by the hour. I just kept turning it upside down. And then I couldn't remember which way was right side up. I had turned the hourglass maybe 7 times before I realized there was no difference between one side or the other, thats when I hit the deer.
Its funny because you don't usually see deer out here in the desert, its all snakes and reptiles. My arm itched and something felt ominous about this trip. Thats why we came out here.
Gym was an elderly native american gentleman. I had always hoped to refer to hip affectionately as Chief but it never really panned out well. He didn't speak much, so it suited him. Most people had a sense of aversion about him for whatever reason, must be that stoic gaze a near elderly man gets from years of. Being stoic. The unintended fear inducing disposition of a man 6'2" and full of muscle. He often smiled when I gave him a vegemite sandwich. He for some reason, coming from his native american descent was quite enamored with Australasian peoples. He had never been to Australia but said he had visited it in a peyote cactus ceremony. He told me when he was much younger before the casinos and gas stations, the reserve still had the values of old, and they still preserved old traditions. Tragically all the fucking hippies came in the 70's and depleted much of the abundance of the long growing hard shelled root succulent.
Gym sojourned across the sky, around the earth, through it, and into the cosmos. Many times in his youth, he would tell me of all the strange anomalous things he would find there, in 153 degrees, sweating out the ancestral memories of his peoples. He told me what I already knew about the wrongs done to his ancestors, many times over, generations after. Foregone conclusions in the minds of the conquerors. I could see his eyes change towards me when he would retell the stories. I reminded him that I was irish, and tried to placate him with half knowledge about potato famines and...He would just revert back to staring out the window at the stars, hoping one would shoot down to the earth and bring back the nobility of a great people tormented and anguished. Though he would always smile when it was time to take another hit. But hey so would I. Who wouldn't?
There was one more gas stop at the border town before we headed out to the gorge to meet Tezcat. I pretended not to see the indian kids huffing gas out of paper bags and falling over, faces going blue and puffy. Gym just stared out the window, he watched it, he saw everything. I figured he kept his shit under control pretty well for the fact we were going to go meet a group of meth'd out vicious killers and pick up 2 kg of heroin in exchange for a bag with a smoke bomb in it. Fuck I knew it was a backwards plan, thats why I couldn't figure out which way the hourglass should go. The sweat wasn't from the heat, it was from the prospect of having my fingers twisted up in razor wire while a scorpion took pieces out of my face. What the fuck was going to happen. I was getting hysterical, Gym stopped talking and all I could hear was my panic and terror cycling through my everythought. I just took a hit 20 minutes ago, the hourglass was 1/3 gone, fuck! I flipped it back again.
'Stop shaking, you are covered in sweat' Gym said
'I can't, these are fucking maniac psycho killers and we don't even have a gun, they're going to feed our balls to fucking dogs man' I said
'You are projecting your fear, I can smell it in your sweat, I can taste it in the air. All we have to do is give them the bag, when it goes off. We take the down and leave, have a hit down the road'
Gym had a way of calming me with his simple American stoicism, the stuff of marlboro ads, if they werent marketed to people like me. Terrified addicts trying to pull some shit over, typical story, guy fucks up gets killed and hacked up, found months later in 3 or 4 different locations...Jesus fucking christ. My heart fell into my stomach. I can't digest this. I can't hold it down.
'I need to pull over'
I vomited all over the side of the car, the hues of red and brown didn't bode well with the hot sun, red rocks and sand. a few feet away there was a dead coyote, mother and fetus; baking in the sun. Its intestines strewn about like German sausage. I vomited again, but nothing came out, just wrenching hacking sounds and some blood from my throat
I thought about going back to California, just booking it, ditching Gym at the next gas station if I had to. But I knew he wouldn't be too happy about that, indeed quite miffed. I bullshitted myself for another minute about aborting this mission and wrapping the umbilical cord around its neck, just like the dead coyote. My memory jogged of the dead deer. I was starting to get the shakes. Fuck the hour glass I needed some shit right now.
Back on the road I realized I was kidding myself about booking it back to California, fuck thats why I had to make this score. I mean how many dealers and cartels can I rip off before they all want me dead. Cortez was waiting in the valley to 'eat your liver wit some fava beans and shit' anyways at this point I said fuck it and I knew either way death was coming for me at one time or another.
I lost allot of friends to junk, for some reason I could only see their faces but never remember their names. Its not that they werent important or that I wasn't friends with them, its just I was high on fucking junk.
Tragic like a crack head prostitute with a retarded kid. Ha, I laughed out loud for a second. Gym just starred at me again with his 'fuck white people look' I mentioned green fields and starving people, he didn't shift. I gestured to what was left of the down in the console. Gym obliged and soon we were drifting back to bliss for a minute until the itch set in again...Or maybe it was the anxiety of being butchered by mad Aztecas again. I couldn't remember
When we woke up, Gym and I were inside of Tezcats lair. It smelled like iron and was more humid then the desert should be...also my shoes were sticking to the concrete floor in what I hoped was oil...I wanted that black tar. Thats why I drove here in my car. Thats why I brought Gym to muscle us out if we got put in a bad spot. One of them had our bag, was brining it into a back room. I'm so fucked.
I had always had an aversion to excessive gratuitous violence. And seeing Gym break under the pressure was more than I could take, watching the sinews tears and twist as his bones fractured and crinkled in the vice. He never screamed though, just gluttural heaves. They kept twisting his fingers and putting his hand in the fucking vice. God these are sick fucking bastards. Jesus H Christ, fucking Jesus H Christ. They spoke in broken spanish hate speech. I hadn't had my damn fix yet...Fuck thats not important right now. The smell in the room, that fucking weird virgin mary death statue in the corner; I was getting hysterical, I couldn't stop the seizurous shakes and panic breathes. I tried to hold back the vomit so they wouldn't know I was here. So God would spare me and punish Gym for a few minutes longer, Jesus H Christ, my petty life of larceny and addiction passed through my consciouness. I could not longer control my bodily functions, secretions coming from my nose and mouth, the smell of death and the crazed demons now carving up my friend. I couldn't make out if he was screaming now or not, there was just blurred vision and a phlanging echo of everything I didn't want to hear. I wanted to pass out but the fear and the terror were too great. One last relent, one last repent. The horrors of my fate, what I had created, living dead dread space, I'm going to fucking die!
The circle of tryrants exhibited their bloodlust in a mad dance of the swarming hypnogognia, My eyes rolled into my head and the room span around me bluring into the progressively mutating and metamorphizing figures. Their mad frenzy of hatefilled kali womb nest spider webs of eternal death, snakes and parasites, to die with them here in this fucking hellish place. God oh god, Jesus H fucking christ. I wrenched once more and as the demons swirled above me in a vortex of hate claiming my soul and inflicting pain and anguish onn my body I could feel my hysteria about to break. The dizzying array of colour and sounds, When I finally purged, I could feel my body turn inside out, projected through the walls in the room, into the sky, beyond the sun and neptune, into the heart of the galaxy. I wrenched again and thought about Gym, why hadn't they come for me yet? Screaming his name aloud now and completely blind save for the mad tapestry of blood red flashes across my minds eye. I fell from the chair I was strapped in, the floor was filled with blood, so much blood. It was getting so thick, I could taste it in my mouth and breathe it into my lungs, vomiting periodically as I crawled through the congealing black tar. Like quicksand in the hourglass. My time was up I was certain, I was sinking deep down into this, more than Gyms blood, more than many peoples, hundreds, thousands. The horrors, what was this place?
I said allowed with all my strength 'what is this place!' I could feel Gym appear, his body fully intact, without lacerations or wounds, or vice crushed and twisted fingers. Jesus Christ Im in fucking hell oh god! I thought, Gym spoke as though he was inside of me, he told me there was no hell, there was no heaven, there was no place. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him towards me, he turned into 10,000 cigarettes, and when he fell to the floor 10,000 cigarettes, each turned to 10,000 shards of glass. I watched as the glass melted into the floor, I could see spirits emitting from it as the smoke rose to the ceiling and burned a hole through the roof, I became large, dense like a sandstone rock that stands in the desert for aeons, carved away in wind for millenia. Infinite in age and as large as the sky. I just kept expanding, the demons became like insects festering to leech and suck in their pools of blood. Parasites feeding on us. Gym sacrificed himself so I could live, I owed it to him.
I arrived later than expected. The purging was over, others had gone to sleep or passed out by the smoking embers of the fire. I couldn't move to fast because my stomach muscles were herniated. At 47 I realized after so many years and experiences that these were not just plants. I wasn't just fucking around here with this. This was some serious shit, and if I did the wrong thing in the spirit world, you better believe the demons be coming for me. But Gym was always there, he didn't speak their language, but he was the guardian, It didn't matter though, because in the end as I rose above the torture and tumult, above the hating and suffering, into the sky I rose, and out from there I could see the whole earth and all of creation. Everything was I and I was everything, in my heart I knew if I let it in, there would be nothing to defend against because the power of love would envelop it, transform it somehow, as cliched as it sounded. The way it felt was far too real.
Demons don't know how to act when you love them, they want to feed on your fears and your hate, they want to pull you in, but when you give to them without their having to take, there is no friction in the process, they flow into one and one flows into them, and in this process we realize duality is illusory, and the relationship between one and another is a persistent illusion. I think thats how I met Gym. When the veil is pulled back and compassion is the root; there is nothing unconquered. The spirit is immortal behind all the manifestations and appearances of things, eternal and greater than Time and knowledge. Demons get sifted away like the sand inside the hour glass. Purged away; the ayahuasca in my blood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
chief Desolation Angel
I did not read Kerouac
Another casualty of the War on Drugs
Wow.
Rather than embracing a spiritual awakening brought about by psychedelics, Jack Kerouac preferred to view it as a mental breakdown brought about by alcoholism.
Re: another casualty
Well, Kerouac did have a legitimate alcohol problem. But our culture still views alcoholism as a "disease" that can't really be "cured" -- only dealt with through abstinence. Kerouac could acceptably cite alcohol "addiction" as the reason he was incapable of changing his life or worldview. The same goes for fame, since -- as a writer of semi-autobiographical fiction -- Kerouac didn't see a way to keep his life more private.
In this short excerpt, I hoped to demonstrate that we can't trust his fiction to be a truthful reflection of his real life. In my book I present further evidence that Kerouac's mental breakdown or episode of near-insanity did not happen as it is depicted in Big Sur. All this goes to say that the reality was much more complicated than the fiction.
the surrealist
As far as I know the American surrealist poet Philip Lamantia was the one who turned Jack K onto peyote.As Philip had taken peyote with native Americans in the 50's.Philip was also an influence on Ginsberg's Howl.
"Lamantia failed to perform what Robert Duncan called "a Catholic rescue" on Kerouac, but the two men remained friends, praising and promoting each other's work. Lamantia makes a dazzling appearance as David D'Angeli in Kerouac's acutely autobiographical novel, Desolation Angels - "There was David, that night, lying elegantly on a white fur cover on a bed, with a black cat, reading the Egyptian Book of the Dead and passing joints around, talking strangely ..." Leaving aside the transparent pseudonym, the portrait is an accurate one. Photos of Lamantia from this time show the darkly beautiful young man with the slightly sinister edge — balanced by a genuine piety - present in Kerouac's portrayal. It doesn't take too much effort to work out why he was such a distinctive figure on the San Francisco art and literature circuit".
I think it is important to realize that drugs of all kinds figure into the picture, along with psychedelics, how can we place psychedelics into some kind of special place withouttaking into context the life and times of the people who were caught up the psychedelicwave, just as other drugs have a creative influence, just because and regardless of the war on drugs.Kerouac is a very interesting case in the middle of all these shifts and transitions.Alcohol was always the fuel that went into Jack's jalopy, and everything else just happened into the mix, Burroughs was the junkie, Jack the drinker, it was Ginsberg that seemed to find the balance.In any case, as far as the poetic influence, as far as the style, Kerouac seems to have been able to write booze fueled and been able to find a fluid spin on his own creation of hip cat verse, and also we can't forget that On The Road was also benzedrine fueled.So the psychedelic thing was not that important to his already mind manifesting "wild form" Yet the changing times brought the psychedelic into his Catholic mind."Catholic" meaning not only his upbringing and background, but also his search for a pure honest approach.But all this being a part of the scene that he lived in and the influence of the others, Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Ginsberg, ect.Of course, the psychology of Kerouac, his own personal struggle with the swift moving effects of his fame, and the swift shift of the mental landscape from 50's to 60's with the advent of the psychedelic all flashed through the initial whiskey ignited pathos of his creative vision.If Jack had been more a creation of the 60's and he had that magic of story telling that he did, then we can only marvel what his hep cat style might have sounded like, we can only imagine, because it so happens, that the whole psychedelic moment is fraught with the novelty Terence Mckenna tried to tackle, and through the tumult and transition Tim Leary tried to foster an authentic revolution in consciousness, or at least to give it a framework from which to proceed the psychedelic point of departure.But, we need to also grok the purpose of poetry, and novels such as Kerouac made in the midst of all this helter skelter, hooey jive.Things seeme to be moving so fast now, one must not wonder too much, why a sensitive soul like Kerouac was caught by the tumbling tide, time has come today.
iphone Apps
Raise the Calendar stones, and the walls; 10,000 incantations.
DMT is significantly less important than the caapi alkaloids. Tetrahydroharmine is of great significance for restoring a balanced mental state as well as stabilizing mood and ending depression. Also it improves memory and cognition in general. It makes the mind expansive and ones logic sharp and definite, but without the caffeinated anxiety of...assholes. So,
As I grow older I am becoming more concerned with drug use in our culture. The main problems I see are the fact that people who use cocaine, opiates, methamphetamine, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals are in a state of spiritual deprivation and cognitive decline. Of course these drugs- like poor nutrition, manufactured consumer desire, and the other reptilian conditions bestowed on us the, 99% by our greedfiending christ-church (building is no christos dig?) and I feel like the occupy movement is what it is, its politically focused. its the first wave, a general consent amongst people regarding the overt failures of governments across the world, as well as the social infastructure it self. We are built on a foundation of lies and deceit, perpetuated by manufactured desires, to consume and take, to want more, we are never full. Never content, snort another line and get your mind straight for a minute; the same who short sell our future and trade on the inside for their greed and desire.
This is a war of consciousness. The first of its kind in. This isn't religion, this is true knowing, this is impending now happening wake up sunshine. We have to control the context. We have to dominate our enemies and always they should be on the defensive, always governments should be answering to us. Pressure pressure, endless pressure, until the machine stops, and we build it again rooted in the ethics of the earth and the sentient rights of all humans inhabiting it.
Harsh but true. I'm not a healer, I'm not a shaman, but I am a zealot, have convictions and regardless of what happens I am determined to bring this understanding to our civilization. For the future of our species, for the benefit of the next 7 generations. I really don't want to argue about it, call me a psychedelic fascist, call me negative, call me what you will. Will conquer.
However, I must say regardless of who one is, Tetrahydroharmine (THH) is only benenficial to our brains, to our minds, and to our species. It causes no ill effect and one feels immediate relaxation and the clarity of a balanced mind. And of course using it with psilocin or DMT will enhance these alkaloids as well as take away the anxiety that could arise with them. I have come to believe in the paramount importance of integrating THH into our culture, into the pharmacological foundations which shape our civilization. Pure psychedelics like psilocin are far more radical and part of me wonders about Aztecan bloodletting rights and human sacrifice... There are many dangers with these substances, but currently alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine, shape our paradigms on the macroscale. I want to shift this paradigm, I want to bring the knowledge of the earth into mainstream consciousness. This is path to liberation, this isn't an opinion. This is science, this is magic, this is truth, its there without any particular person pointing it out. But weather or not its integrated is up to us.
It is delusional to believe that substances do not have a powerful ability to reshape our minds and cultures. Thats what LSD was to the 60's before Charles Manson... For those that choose to cultivate their awareness and unlock secret potentialities of the bioelectric realizations of the living nervous system, THH is the source alkaloid for beginning liberation system restart.
When science and spirit are merged we are verging on a radical catharsis, on a new world. Establishment education tells us to stamp out our intuitions and replace them with binary artificial thought forms. If someone wants to say climate change is bullshit, I might just want to knock him the fuck out. Not that this has anything to do with what I have stated above. I'm sure I could just get baked and gorge on a box of GMO cinnamon toast crunch cereal, then pass out from blood sugar overkill...Anyways Just saying, be the aggressors, win the war. I can't do this alone. But even if that was the case, I Will, Still, persistent chaos. I am not a plastic shaman. Fuck it Im going to go get baked; sorry about the confusion. DR, suchen suchen, at so and so's
7 generations of Marcus...
thanks
I really enjoyed this article. I appreciate your insight that K's body of work was in some way in rivalry with psychedelics. That makes a lot of sense, and I had not considered it before. I also wonder what it would have been like had Sartre testified publically to the overwhelming influence mescaline seems to have had on his life. The suppression of these facts is indeed strategically important for both men as writers and thinkers.
re: thanks
road trippin'
Streetttchhhhhing
Re: Streetttchhhhhing
Actually from what I've read it appears that Kerouac's experiments with psychedelics were almost always alone or in a small group, not at a party or while also drinking alcohol. My primary claim in this essay is that Big Sur leaves certain major aspects out of Kerouac's real life during the period of 1958-1960 -- but the parts that are omitted tell us a lot about him (and also, symbolically, about our culture).
I'm aware that Kerouac usually cited jazz as one of his primary influences. In fact, the "jazziness" in Kerouac's writing was one of the main things that attracted me when I started reading the "Duluoz Legend" back in 2004. In a thread with Dark Angel above, we also discuss the inspiration that Kerouac drew from some of Neal Cassady's letters. Kerouac also claimed that Burroughs's early prose style (straightforward realism) was another influence.
To be clear, I haven't suggested that Kerouac never thought to write spontaneously before trying psychedelics, or that those substances outweighed his other influences. What I'm saying is more that psychedelics seem to have added a magical energy to Kerouac's books in a way that he couldn't completely describe. In other words, I think psychedelics helped him live out his spontanous prose theory -- even though, as I've found in his journals and letters, his ideas about writing spontaneously go back to the mid-1940s at least (and, as you've written, plenty of other authors whote "spontaneously"; Kerouac also cited Yeats and others).
I think a book like The Subterraneans, written in 1953, has an energy that reflects his experiments with peyote in 1952 -- just as Big Sur's energy reflects his use of ayahuasca, mescaline, and psilocybin from 1959-1961. So I'm not trying to wipe out the primary biographical knowledge about the inspiration from jazz, Cassady, etc. But I am trying to augment that knowledge and make the record more complete.