Desolation Peak

Kerouac Jack

Description

"Something will happen to me on Desolation Peak…I can feel it." 

In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, CA, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment. He wrote in his journal that he planned "to concentrate on emptiness of self, other selves, living beings, and universal self." In letters to friends he proclaimed, "Something will happen to me on Desolation Peak…I can feel it." 

Kerouac's experience on Desolation Peak forms the climax of his novel The Dharma Bums and has also been depicted in part 1 of Desolation Angels and a chapter in his nonfiction book Lonesome Traveler. None of these versions offers a full, true picture, however; and for that reason, Desolation Peak is essential reading. What separates Kerouac from all other writers is the depth that he went in exploring his own consciousness, and what will prove his most enduring legacy is the record he left of that exploration, revealing the psyche of a sensitive, tortured artist grappling with himself in the mid-20th Century. 

The highlight of Desolation Peak is the journal he kept, starkly revealing the depth of his poverty, the extremity of his mood swings, and the ongoing arguments with himself over the future direction of his life, his writing, and faith. Along with the journal, he worked on a series of projects, including "Ozone Park," another installment of the Duluoz Legend beginning in 1943, after his discharge from the Navy; "The Martin Family," an intended sequel to The Town and the City, and "Desolation Adventure," a series of sketches that became part 1 of Desolation Angels,. In writing it, Kerouac was re-committing himself to his more experimental, then-unpublishable style, declaring in the journal that "the form of the future is no-form."

Also included in Collected Writings is "The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing," Kerouac's "transliteration" of the Diamond Sutra, his "Desolation Blues" and "Desolation Pops" poems, and assorted prose sketches and dreams. 

Sujets

• Poetry
• American

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Bird Books
• Date de parution: 08 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781644283417
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

this is a genuine rare bird & sal paradise press book
Rare Bird Books | Sal Paradise Press 6044 North Figueroa Street Los Angeles, CA 90042 rarebirdbooks.com
Copyright © 2022 by Jim Sampas, Literary Executor, the Estate of Jack Kerouac
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic.
For more information, address: Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department 6044 North Figueroa Street Los Angeles, CA 90042
Set in Minion/Janson
Art by Schae Koteles Cover Design by Schae Koteles and Robert Schlofferman Interior Design by Hailie Johnson
Notebook and Forest Service paperwork courtesy of the Estate of Jack Kerouac Photographs by Charles Shuttleworth
hardcover isbn : 9781644282861 ebook isbn : 9781644283417
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022942023 Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.



Contents
In-Text Citation Abbreviations Used Throughout
Additional Works Cited
Desolation Adventure: the Deeper Story of Jack Kerouac’s Mountaintop Experience
Desolation Timeline
Desolation Journal—Transcription Notes
Desolation Journal
Desolation Journal Notes
Ozone Park
Ozone Park Deleted Chapters
Ozone Park Notes
The Martin Family
Desolation Blues
Desolation Pops
The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing
Assorted Writings
Acknowledgments
Images and Figures



6 Jack Kerouac


In-Text Citation Abbreviations Used Throughout
BB Goddard, Dwight, ed. 1970. A Buddhist Bible . Boston: Beacon Press.
DA Kerouac, Jack. 2019. Desolation Angels . Penguin Books.
DB Kerouac, Jack. 2006. The Dharma Bums . Penguin Classics.
EP Maher, Paul, Jr., ed. 2005. Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac. Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Journal Kerouac, Jack. June 18, 1956–September 26, 1956. The Desolation Journal . Berg Collection 56.1. Diary No. 1. Holograph Diary: “Dharma / (1956) / Desolation Peak / Desolation.” 90 leaves.
LT Kerouac, Jack. 1970. Lonesome Traveler . Grove Press Black Cat.
SL1 Charters, Ann, ed. 1995. Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, Volume 1, 1940– 1956 . Penguin Books.
SL2 Charters, Ann, ed. 1999. Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, Volume 2, 1957– 1969 . Penguin Books.
SOD Kerouac, Jack. 1997. Some of the Dharma. Viking Penguin.
T Kerouac, Jack. 1992. Tristessa . Penguin Books.
UK Tietchen, Todd, ed. 2016. The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished & Newly Translated Writings. Translated by Jean-Christophe Cloutier. Library of America.
VD Kerouac, Jack. 1994. Vanity of Duluoz . Penguin Books.
VG Kerouac, Jack. 1991. Visions of Gerard . Penguin Books.



Desolation Peak: Collected Writings 7


Additional Works Cited
By Jack Kerouac
Kerouac, Jack. 2003. Book of Haikus. Edited by Regina Weinrich. Penguin Books.
Kerouac, Jack. 2000. Orpheus Emerged . ibooks, Inc.
Kerouac, Jack. 1958. The Subterraneans . Grover Press.
By Others
Amburn, Ellis. 1998. Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac . St. Martin’s Press.
Charters, Ann. 1973. Jack Kerouac, A Biography. Straight Arrow Books.
Coolidge, Clark, and Neeli Cherkovski. 2020. Coolidge and Cherkovski in Conversation . edited by Kyle Harvey. Lithic Press.
McNally, Dennis. 1979. Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America . Random House.
Suiter, John. 2002. Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades . Counterpoint.
Turner, Steve. 1996. Angelheaded Hipster: A Life of Jack Kerouac . Viking Penguin.
The Works , season 3, episode 13, “On the Road to Desolation.” 1997. Directed by David Stewart and written by Andrew O’Hagan.
The following additional manuscripts are part of the The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, which houses the Jack Kerouac Archive in The New York Public Library.
18.21 Holograph draft novel, untitled. (Begins: “Begin Here. I. I remember the morning my father got up and found some baby mice in the closet…”). [Note: This is the “Ozone Park” manuscript, identified by the chapter headings on pages 14, 22.]
18.26 Holograph notebook, “The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing—A Transliteration from the English and Sanskrit (divided into daily readings) by John Kerouac.”
18.31 Holograph novel, “The Martin Family - a novel - The Martin Family by John Kerouac. The sequel to ‘The Town and the City’, Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy.”



8 Jack Kerouac


Desolation Adventure: the Deeper Story of Jack Kerouac’s Mountaintop Experience
Read any biography of Jack Kerouac and here’s essentially what you’ll learn: that in the summer of 1956 he spent two months in a mountaintop shack as a fire lookout for US Forest Service in the North Cascades in Washington State, and nothing much happened. Mostly he was bored.
What happened to him on the mountaintop was that almost nothing happened. His eight weeks on Desolation Peak were just like the eight weeks of all the other firewatchers who spent their summers in the Cascades. It was monotonous, uneventful and boring. By the end of it what he felt most intensely was his own loneliness. (Ann Charters, Kerouac, A Biography 262 [1973])
Although he listened to his colleagues banter with each other on the shortwave radio, he rarely joined in. On his knees he asked “What is the meaning of the void? […] Soon boredom set in. […] Desolation’s solitude had been too much for a sociable urban man like Jack. (Dennis McNally, Desolate Angel 219–20 [1979])
He planned to use the time as a period of cleansing. There would be no alcohol, drugs, or sex, and so he could write and meditate and perhaps come face-to-face with God (or the void). […] But instead of visions and revelations he faced boredom and an aching loneliness in the face of the emptiness around him. (Steve Turner, Angelheaded Hipster 161 [1996])
In his wilderness isolation, he learned nothing, except that in sixty-three days a grown man leaves a pile of excrement approximately the height and size of an infant. […] At least he’d detoxed. (Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac 253 [1998])
And so on. In fairness to the biographers, whose books cover Jack’s whole life, these two months may not have seemed to merit special attention, but this book is meant to change that view. Until now the exception has been John Suiter’s Poets on the Peaks , where Jack’s experience on Desolation is related in a twenty-page chapter, but even that account doesn’t reveal the full story. Suiter calls it “Jack’s



Desolation Peak: Collected Writings 9


last great adventure”; 1 for people of a certain bent, however, it’s the greatest of all, and it came at a critical moment in his personal life and professional career. Jack’s experience on Desolation Peak marked the climax of his involvement with Buddhism and of a decade of restless travel; it’s the high point of his journeying and spiritual seeking. A voracious reader, he nevertheless chose to go up the mountain without any books, only his personally typed copy of the Diamond Sutra, which he planned to read every day and transcribe yet again, this time in language more accessible to American readers, in order to achieve the enlightenment that he was certain would result. The extent of his solitude, thus, was acute. There were no radio stations from the outside world to tune into. No electricity. No running water. And most radically for Jack, two months without alcohol. It was his last, best chance to change the trajectory of his life, to avoid the alcoholic downfall that accelerated a year later with the instant celebrity from On the Road ’s publication and that would ultimately kill him at age forty-seven.
So much depends on what you’ve read of Kerouac. Many readers—even if they like it, seeing past the dated sexual attitudes—never venture beyond On the Road . For those who do, often the next step is to read The Dharma Bums , and for fans of that book, Desolation Peak is the highlight, the experience there, despite some hints to the contrary, providing the novel’s upbeat ending. In the novel Ray Smith seems to find peace on the mountaintop, a religious syncretism and attunement with nature. At first he’s frightened, traveling up to the lookout shack in cold rain and fog: “I gulped. It was too dark and dismal to like it. ‘This will be my home and resting place all summer?’” (177). Two days later, though, once the fog lifts, the vista is beautiful, “And it was all mine, not another human pair of eyes in the world were looking at this immense cycloramic universe of matter. I had a tremendous sensation of its dreamlikeness which never left me all that summer and in fact grew and grew” (179–80).
Much the same story is told in “Alone on a Mountaintop,” a chapter included in Lonesome Traveler originally written for, and published in, Holiday magazine—i.e., a travel piece that’s reputedly nonfiction, but aside from some of the logistics included (detailing the route into the Cascades and the actual job of fire-watching) the story is very much a poetic representation, filled with pathetic fallacy and magical realism:

1 Suiter 2002 , 221.



10 Jack Kerouac


In the red dusk the mountains were symphonies. […] Pink snow and the clouds all distant and frilly like ancient remote cities of Buddhaland splendor. […] For supper I made chop suey and baked some biscuits and put the leftovers in a pan for deer that came in the moonlit night and nibbled like big stra