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13 pages, 280 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Dharma Bums: A (Fictional) Pseudo-Buddhist Hagiography, or a Pseudo-ojoden

by Ovidiu Matiu

Religions 2024, 15(2), 148; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020148 - 24 Jan 2024

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2765

This paper analyses Jack Kerouac’s brief but intense conversion to American pseudo-Buddhism and the artistic effect of this biographical development, arguing that his conversion was total from a spiritual point of view and that its almost immediate effect was the production of a literary piece which should be read as a (fictional) pseudo-Buddhist hagiography, or a pseudo-ojoden. The article investigates Jack Kerouac’s life as the life of a modern American Buddha, as a person engaged in a constant quest for spiritual enlightenment, who imbued his work with a spiritual feeling derived from his personal, direct, albeit limited experience with spirituality. His novel, The Dharma Bums, is a (fictional) pseudo-Buddhist hagiography because it is (auto)biographical, and the central characters are portrayed as enlightened, “holy” beings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Narrative Literature)

11 pages, 247 KB

Open AccessArticle

Green Jack: Naïveté, Frontier and Ecotopia in On the Road

by Michael Amundsen

Humanities 2021, 10(1), 37; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10010037 - 26 Feb 2021

Viewed by 2781

Abstract

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is among the seminal texts of the Beat Generation canon, and the author himself is renowned as a hero of American letters and freedom. Kerouac’s book is clearly one of the most inspirational of the last century and helped to spur the culture of mobility, spiritual yearning and adventure in the decades following its release not only in the USA but in many other parts of the world. A close reading of On the Road reveals other realities about the author, through his character Sal Paradise, and the America he discovers in his travels. This article looks at the files from Kerouac’s aborted stay in the US navy, letters, journal entries and the text of On the Road itself to demonstrate that the author’s Whitmanesque longings and ennui are very much rooted in a romantic vision challenged by the realities of mid-20th-century American life. However, Kerouac’s “ecotopia of the West” also suggests other ways of living which would influence America’s counterculture and environmental movements. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

11 pages, 291 KB

Open AccessArticle

“[A]n Exterior Air of Pilgrimage”: The Resilience of Pilgrimage Ecopoetics and Slow Travel from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

by Susan Signe Morrison

Humanities 2020, 9(4), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040117 - 8 Oct 2020

Viewed by 4160

Abstract

While the Beats can be seen as critical actors in the environmental humanities, their works should be seen over the longue durée. They are not only an origin, but are also recipients, of an environmentally aware tradition. With Geoffrey Chaucer and Jack Kerouac, we see how a contemporary American icon functions as a text parallel to something generally seen as discrete and past, an instance of the modern embracing, interpreting, and appropriating the medieval. I argue that The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer influenced Kerouac’s shaping of On the Road. In the unpublished autograph manuscript travel diary dating from 1948–1949 (On the Road notebook), Kerouac imagines the novel as a quest tale, thinking of pilgrimage during its gestation. Further, Kerouac explicitly cites Chaucer. His novel can be seen not only in the tradition of Chaucer, but can bring out aspects of pilgrimage ecopoetics in general. These connections include structural elements, the spiritual development of the narrator, reliance on vernacular dialect, acute environmental awareness, and slow travel. Chaucer’s influence on Kerouac highlights how certain elements characteristic of pilgrimage literature persist well into the modern period, in a resilience of form, language, and ecological sensibility. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

11 pages, 221 KB

Open AccessArticle

Sad Paradise: Jack Kerouac’s Nostalgic Buddhism

by Sarah F. Haynes

Religions 2019, 10(4), 266; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10040266 - 13 Apr 2019

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 6637

Abstract

Jack Kerouac’s study of Buddhism started in earnest in 1953 and is traditionally believed to have ended in 1958. This paper considers the relationship between Kerouac’s Buddhist practice and his multi-layered nostalgia. Based on a close reading of his unpublished diaries from the mid-1950s through mid-1960s, I argue that Buddhism was a means of coping with his suffering and spiritual uncertainty. Kerouac’s nostalgic Buddhism was a product of orientalist interpretations of the religion that allowed him to replace his idealized version of his past with an idealized form of Buddhism. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhism in the United States and Canada)

12 pages, 218 KB

Open AccessArticle

Projective Verse: The Spiritual Legacy of the Beat Generation

by Paul E. Nelson

Humanities 2018, 7(4), 102; https://doi.org/10.3390/h7040102 - 22 Oct 2018

Viewed by 5733

Abstract

Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, poetics or cultural activism; Jack Kerouac’s prose, poetry and his method of composition; Gary Snyder’s environmental and Buddhist consciousness and bioregional ethos, or the opening made by the Beats for Eastern spirituality in the west are of intrinsic value and will be for generations, this paper seeks to posit that it is Michael McClure’s use of Projective Verse, that future generations of writers and readers will come to appreciate as that movement’s spiritual legacy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beat Generation Writers as Readers of World Literature)

16 pages, 110 KB

Open AccessArticle

Charisma and Counterculture: Allen Ginsberg as a Prophet for a New Generation

by Yaakov Ariel

Religions 2013, 4(1), 51-66; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel4010051 - 25 Jan 2013

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 12161

Abstract

The cultural role of Allen Ginsberg does not fit a typical Weberian model of charisma. The avant-garde poet was an outstanding personality and possessed an unusual ability to affect people. He played a vital role in expanding the boundaries of personal freedom in America of the 1950s–1990s, blazing new paths for spiritual, communal and artistic expression. Serving as a father figure for the counterculture—a symbol of an alternative set of cultural norms, lifestyles and literary forms—Ginsberg was a charismatic counter-leader, with no clearly defined followers or movement. As a leader in a more liberated era, he offered energy, ideas, inspiration, and color, but no structure or authority. Instead he was a prophet of freedom, calling on people to express themselves openly, to expand and experiment. This role demanded charisma but of a different kind—one that was more spiritual and less organizational or hierarchical. This article follows Gary Dickson’s essay “Charisma, Medieval and Modern,” in offering a suggestive analysis of and supplement to Weber’s understanding of charisma. The article grapples with the concept of charisma in relation to a generation that resented rigid structures and authorities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Charisma, Medieval and Modern)

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