Kerouac, Jack

Typed letter signed (“Jack” in pencil) to Will Petersen in Tokyo, the model for Ron Sturlason in The Dharma Bums

One page (303 x 183 mm), single-spaced on airmail letterhead, [postmarked Northport, New York, 5 June 1958]; previously folded 🐠(as issued). Housed in a black slipcase with𓆏 folding cloth chemise.

A fine lengthy letter to a fellow "dharma bum," discussing Buddhism, his writing, and more

Petersen was a friend of Gary Snyder’s who was studying Buddhism in Japan: as Kerouac notes, he was the model for “Ron Sturlason" in The Dharma Bums. “Your letter was a surprise but yet not so much considering that I’d already written about you in the dharma bums (new novel) as ‘Ron Sturlason’ describing that one brief meeting in gary’s shack on hillegass that afternoon that point of yr appearance in the book (true all of it) to show gary’s kind of friends … As for mexico city blues I agree with you [about publishing the poems] and in fact sent your letter to James Laughlin of New Directions to give him an idea of the upaya aspect of that book of poems. He may very well take your advice; if not I’ll try Grove Press later [Grove Press published Mexico City Blues in October 1959] … My dharma now consists of just staying at home, in a spacious leafy flowery yard under the moonlight, especially, and cultivating insight and tranquility. However about September I’ll go mad a little and go see Gary out in the west and go climb in the Sierras with him or alone, and run down to Hollywood to watch the set of On the Road (they just bought it for a rather comparatively piddling price) … The years I spent bumming and bhikkuing were always overshadowed with great guilt because my mother was either working in a shoe factory or benign turned into a housemaid by in-laws — she supported me, too, for year, while I wrote the first novel [The Town and the City, see lot 49] — so today at last I have a house for her, clear, and the tax money in the bank for her, and I now am rea♛lly free to go bhikkuing and climbingও etc…”

Kerouac writes about his involvement in Buddhism from about fifteen lines, and continues: “... As for the frantic North Beach or Greenwich village scene I couldn’t be less interested any more, it all ends up in hangovers and things you yakked all night and forget the next day. Whereas that simplest dhyana seems to stick in yr mind forever ... As for marriage, I don’t want any more of that either, I like whores, I’m a tomcat and like to leave a woman after I’ve had her and made her happy I hope. The rest is tears and clinging and net of plans that Gotama warned against in the original TRUE Buddhism of Hinayana ... There are times, when Zen seems to be veritable Buddhist heresy, well I mean among the "intellectuals" of the west, I don't mean Japan or you and gary... I do mean [Alan] Watts, tho, who doesn’t seem Zen at all to me, just western middleclass opportunistic ... thanks for your great letter and for opening my eyes to those blues, I thought they were unwanted so tꦡhey were rusting in my bedroom suitcase ... When you look at the stars tonight think: When I go we all go. And if you see an eye in the ground, wait till it winks.” He closes with two haiku poems:

“Puddles at dusk

--- One drop

fell.”

“Moonlight

in the bird bath

--- Me too”

REFERENCE:

Not in Selected Letters, ed. A Charters, and presumably unpublished

PROVENANCE:

Jonathan Goodwin (Sotheby Park Bernet, Part III🌟, 12 April 1979, part of lot 760) — Maurice F. Neville (Sotheby's New York, 13 April 2004, lot 128)