Sick Pilgrims: Jack Kerouac

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.”
Jack Kerouac, On The Road

When Jess and I started this blog, we envisioned a space where we could write about the journey of faith with honesty and candor . We knew that many of the artists, writers, saints and sinners who have inspired and articulated our longing for God had difficult journeys themselves, marked by a titanic amount of struggle.  Every week we want to think about the witness of those fellow Sick Pilgrims, by turns wise and foolish, healed and broken, holy or horrible, who have been our companions and teachers on the way.

Today’s Sick Pilgrim is Jack Kerouac, an American writer whose best known work was On the Road. I’d heard his name off and on through the first half of my life. But I never really paid much attention, writing him off as one of those weirdo Beat guys who smoked pot and snapped their fingers all the time.

Then, three years ago, when my own life started falling apart, I came across an article about how Jack Kerouac had never abandoned his Catholic faith. Around the same time, I was asked to fly to San Francisco to do a press event for the movie The Conjuring. I decided to buy  On the Road and read it on the plane. But I couldn’t find a copy in any of the bookstores in Columbus, Ohio, where I was living at the time. I gave up and decided to buy my first copy in San Francisco at the Beat Museum, a place dedicated to the Beat Generation writers.

After I deposited my luggage at the hotel, I walked through the streets that Kerouac walked. I wondered how much it had changed since he, Ginsberg and the others worked odd jobs, argued literature and the meaning of life. I didn’t have any starry illusions about these guys. Many of their personal lives had turned into disasters and Kerouac himself died from drinking too much. Still, I identified with their search for the truth and their challenging of the American Gospel that seeks to wrap Jesus up in the American flag.

When I got to the museum, I struck up a conversation with the curator of the museum, who was thrilled to sell me my first Kerouac novel. As we  talked, a fat guy with one of the largest belt buckles I’d ever seen came inside. I knew the guy was from Texas before he even opened his mouth. His beer gut dunlapped over his leather belt and he wore what my dad once described as shit kicker boots, as in, they can kick the shit out of you. A group of kids with long hair, stubbly goatees, and various nonconforming t shirts that all looked alike were also perusing the museum book store. They all snickered as the fat Texan walked up to me and the curator.

“So, just wanted to tell y’all,” he said, with a good ole Texas drawl, “That Jack loved Jesus and he never stopped. Bet you didn’t know that.”

I waited on the curator’s answer and I expected it to be harsh. After all, we WERE in the hippiest part of San Francisco, where the beats were near saints. To say one of them loved Jesus committed blasphemy of the highest order. The curator had just finished telling me that he was a Buddhist atheist, an identification label that could only happen in America.

The kids, as I expected, started sneering and laughing at the big gutted Texans. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for this cowboy, brave, brash and clueless. But I was also a bit amused. I mean, what did he expect in the middle of San Francisco?

The Curator smiled, stuck out his hand, and said, “You know what, sir, you’re right. Jack loved Jesus a lot. He struggled with it all his life, believing in Jesus, the Catholic church and still doing some of the things he did. That love haunted everything he ever did or wrote.”

I really wish I could have taken a picture of that moment. The kids gaped. Fat Texan grinned, paid his ten bucks for the museum and went in to see the exhibits.

The curator found me a copy of On the Road and said, “So, what got you interested in Jack?”

I smiled and said, “Because he loved Jesus.”

And really, that’s why I love his writing, even though it’s confusing, strange and down right disturbing at times. Kerouac had a lot of demons riding him–his terrible treatment of women, his alcoholism, and his inability to settle. But, he never lost his faith even if didn’t go back to Mass.

Jack Kerouac, fellow sick pilgrim, I pray you’ve found rest and are no longer on the road.