Strange Solitary Mystic: Tracing the Dark Night of the Soul in Kerouac's

RELIGION and the ARTS Religion and the Arts 14 (2010) 418–447 brill.nl/rart

Strange Solitary Mystic: Tracing the Dark Night of the Soul in Kerouac’s Desolation Angels and Big Sur

Mary-Beth Brophy St. Andrews University

Abstract Past scholarship of American beat author Jack Kerouac’s novels has primarily focused on examinations of his “spontaneous prose” style and the inﬂuence of Buddhism on his writing. However, the recent availability to scholars of Kerouac’s private papers indicates that the Catholic themes and imagery in his writing were the result of a conscious and ongoing engagement with Catholicism, rather than relics of his cultural heritage. These Catholic threads take on greater clarity when Kerouac’s novels are read as he intended: as volumes in a larger, omnibus work. This essay examines two novels—Desolation Angels and Big Sur—through the framework of the dark night of the soul, as illuminated by the Spanish Carmelite mystic St. John of the Cross. The journey begun in the Washington state mountains in Desolation Angels and concluded by the shores of the Paciﬁc Ocean in Big Sur chronicles one man’s quest to reunite with the divine and presents a compelling argument for Kerouac’s position as a Catholic writer.

Keywords Jack Kerouac, John of the Cross, Desolation Angels, Big Sur, Jack Duluoz, Catholicism, Carmelite, Dark Night of the Soul, Beat

ecent years have seen a resurgence of interest, both popular and criti- Rcal, in the novels of Beat writer Jack Kerouac, owing in large part to the fanfare surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his most famous work, On the Road. However, despite the delayed but deserved rehabilitation of Kerouac’s reputation from infamous cultural icon to respected author, the question of his position in the pantheon of spiritual writers is still very much an open one: often readers focus on his individual novels as examples of flawed Buddhism or Catholicism, rather than as reflections of a unified spiritual progression. The key to unlocking the door to Kerouac’s writings on faith lies in reading the individual novels as

Kerouac intended them: as segments of a larger unified collection. This spiritual journey across his canon, while unorthodox, can be viewed, at times, to closely parallel the Catholic “dark night of the soul” experience as described by the sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite St. John of the Cross. Visualizing the majority of his novels as part of a single cohesive work, Kerouac traced the evolution of his protagonist—most commonly called Jack Duluoz—across eleven books, beginning with Visions of Gerard and concluding with Big Sur, with Satori in Paris functioning as an epilogue of sorts. It was Kerouac’s intention, as expressed to his agent, Sterling Lord, to ultimately republish all the novels as a single body of work with a con- sistent set of character names (Selected Letters 326). He referred to this omnibus as The Duluoz Legend and sought continually to blur the lines between himself and the legend, often attributing his own novels to Jack Duluoz within the pages of his books, and occasionally naming himself— Jack Kerouac—as the protagonist, as he did in the scroll version of On the Road. This merging of life and fiction has made scholarship of Kerouac’s prose a complex matter. Neither truly fiction nor autobiography, the books are perhaps best described using Kerouac’s own term: Legend. Within this Duluoz Legend, Kerouac devoted a number of volumes to explorations of religion. Visions of Gerard, The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, and Big Sur all feature issues of faith prominently, while Doctor Sax, On the Road, and Satori in Paris each incorporate spiritual matters in various measures. Throughout the years, the spirituality in Kerouac’s novels has been explored and addressed by a number of scholars. Alan Miller, focusing on The Dharma Bums, highlights the ritual nature of travel—a prominent feature in many Kerouac novels—suggesting that protagonist Ray Smith’s religion “emphasizes the solitary nature of the journey toward enlighten- ment” (48). It bears noting that, while Smith’s professed religion in The Dharma Bums is Buddhist, Miller’s description is equally suggestive of Catholic contemplative prayer. Stephen Prothero, speaking of Beat authors in general, also emphasizes movement as a core aspect of the spirituality found in novels of the genre, referring to the central characters of the Beats as “wandering (and writing) bhikkus who scour the earth in a never fully satisfied attempt to find a place to rest” (211). In addressing the specific religious themes within Kerouac’s novels, Benedict Giamo has done an extensive exploration of the role of Buddhism in his book Kerouac, the Word and the Way: Prose Artist as Spiritual Quester.