Jack Kerouac, the anti-establishment Beat Generation icon best known for his countercultural classic “On the Road,” is having his spiritual side revealed like never before. In a trove of newly unearthed writings, many previously unpublished, the depths of Kerouac’s Buddhist faith and his search for transcendence during troubled times come alive in raw, soulful prose.
Unpublished Buddhist Writings Discovered
More than 50 years after Kerouac’s untimely death in 1969, a series of his spiritual musings, poems, and semi-autobiographical stories centered on Buddhism have been discovered among his vast archives. Edited by Charles Shuttleworth for publication by Rare Bird Books, the collection titled “Jack Kerouac: The Buddhist Years” offers an unprecedented glimpse into the author’s inner world during a difficult period in the 1950s.
Battling health issues, alcoholism, and the heartbreak of a split from his lover Alene Lee, Kerouac increasingly turned to Buddhist teachings for solace and insight. As Shuttleworth describes it, the writings are “earnest and full of yearning – desires for understanding and transcendence, his wish to be a better person.”
A Writer at His “Soulful Best”
In one piece titled “The Story Just Begins,” Kerouac reflects:
The joys of life elude the angry man.
Another character muses: “The only wrong I’ve ever done is believe that wrong exists and to go around with that idea in my head and look at everybody through such eyes.” According to Shuttleworth, these writings capture Kerouac “at his prime as a writer” and at “his soulful best,” taking “readers ever deeper into Kerouac’s psyche, all written in his free-flowing, expressive style.”
The Struggle for “On the Road”
The 1950s proved a pivotal and trying decade for Kerouac. While facing personal demons and deteriorating health, he also struggled to find a publisher for “On the Road,” his now-classic novel based on his cross-country adventures with friend Neal Cassady. Famously typed on a continuous 119-foot scroll, it was rejected multiple times before finally being published in 1957.
This trying period and Kerouac’s turn to Buddhist thought for wisdom and peace is poignantly captured in an untitled piece from the upcoming collection:
I was born into the fault sour sea of suffering at five o’clock in the afternoon when the sun was blood red on the rooftops of Centralville, March, snow thawing, whoever I was, coming prepared and freighted with brain body, moist eyeballs fresh for sight, mouth & nose, & butter flesh made to melt in the transient forge of life time, and family name, Kerouac, and equipment for defense, aggression, withdrawal, & grave, wondering instantly on sight of the grainy makeup of the portals of the world: why? WHY is the only question.
An Ironic Turn
Yet in a tragic irony, as Shuttleworth notes in the book’s introduction, despite Kerouac’s embrace of Buddhist precepts, “in the long term … he was unable to live up to Buddhist precepts, re-embraced Christianity, and died alcoholic.” This collection poignantly captures the writer in a period of earnest spiritual seeking, putting to paper his quest to find meaning and peace.
A Vast Record of a Life
Part of a planned series of works from Kerouac’s immense archives, “The Buddhist Years” adds to an already rich legacy. In the words of Jim Sampas, literary executor of Kerouac’s estate:
The Kerouac archive is so rich and so vast … While he was alive, he wrote incessantly, and he saved it all, hoping that it would prove of value to others. It’s a huge record of his life – his feelings, perceptions, and especially with The Buddhist Years, his spirituality.
More than half a century after his passing, Jack Kerouac continues to reveal new layers – his spiritual strivings now brought to light to add greater dimension to a man so often caricatured as the hard-living King of the Beats. In his search for answers to life’s ultimate questions, Kerouac’s journey feels as relevant as ever, inviting readers to ponder along with a writer of rare honesty and soulful expression, always asking: “Why?”
