Correspondence #18: Charles Shuttleworth

After our recent debate about Jack Kerouac's psychological health, the editor of Desolation Peak continues the conversation

Email, January 11th, 2023

Hi Simon,

I was initially reluctant to respond to Steven Taylor's comments [‘Correspondence #17', Rock and the Beat Generation, January 9th, 2023] because, as he wrote, he hasn't read the book (Jack Kerouac's Desolation Peak: Collected Writings, recently released and available now). But especially since the conversation has been extended via the Beat Museum's newsletter, I'll offer a further perspective, beyond the scope of what I've put forth in my ‘Introduction’:

Certainly Kerouac was alcoholic. It was most likely an inherited condition: both of his parents were heavy drinkers, as was Jack's paternal grandfather, Jean-Baptiste, who reportedly died at age 58 of the potato-peel vodka that he made himself. As Jack chronicles in several of his books, his alcoholism was also socially induced: as a teenager and young adult, getting drunk was equated with manliness. He drank all his life, usually to excess, and over time his condition became more and more advanced, especially after the 1957 publication of On the Road, when he could afford hard liquor – as much as he wanted – instead of buying pint bottles of wine.

But readers of Kerouac's journals especially can also see the mental difficulties that plagued him all his life. At age 21 he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and discharged by the Navy (the term at the time was dementia praecox). That diagnosis doesn't fit him well because he was too high-functioning, but, in Windblown World (journal entries beginning in 1947, when he was 25), he frequently questions his sanity in terms much more in line with bipolar disorder (aka manic depression). See, for instance, entries dated Dec. 1st & 17th 1947; Jan. 30th, Feb. 6th, May 5th & May 6th 1948; Aug. 30th 1949; and his ‘Statement of Sanity’ in which he complains of periodically being ‘locked within the doleful psychoses of myself’ (149). In his 1949 ‘Rain and Rivers’ journal he also states, ‘I was born sad [...] it was no trauma that made me so sad – but God: – who made me that way’ (290).

Jack is also on record in stating that he was willing to endure his low states (depression, paranoia, self-loathing, etc.) in order to experience ecstasy, enjoy extreme highs. In Orpheus Emerged, written in 1945 at age 23, the character Michael (who, as in many early works, represents one part of Jack's personality) dismisses the thought of undergoing psychoanalysis, saying, ‘it would ruin me, I would no longer contain dark secrets, and nightmares, and dualisms, and thrilling conflicts. No, I would be left completely cleaned out of my poetic equipment’ (62). Later Michael is said to have written “‘Pain is the law of the artist's life’” (117). Written on the heels of his ‘Self-Ultimacy Period’, this reveals the extent of Jack's commitment to his art. And here are two key quotes from the Desolation journal eleven years later, in 1956, that illustrate his ongoing struggle: from August 8th: ‘If personality is subject to transitory torture by the same law it is subject to eternal rapture — and I KNOW I’m tortured —’; and, from August 23rd, one paragraph after stating, ‘There’s no doubt in my mind any more about Buddha’s teachings — he is truly the Awakener from this hopeless mess,’ he declares in bold print, by writing over the words in dark pencil, ‘I’d rather have drugs and liquor and divine visions than this empty barren fatalism on a mountaintop —.’

And let's not discount Jack's reports of hearing voices (auditory hallucinations are one of the many symptoms of bipolar disorder evidenced in the Desolation journal). In an entry dated May 19th, 1950 in Windblown World, he writes a dialogue – an argument with himself – and then explains that the other voice was ‘my “French-Canadian older brother” who came to me, almost incarnate, in a tea-vision two weeks ago and has been with me ever since. His words strike home and heavy. I listen to him with fear and respect’ (258). Similarly in the Desolation journal he reports another voice speaking to him in French, this one saying, ‘Your words are old & tired’ and ‘You dont have to write any more.’ Two days later he states that the voice was that of Avalokitesvara, the buddha of compassion.

Finally, it's important to point out that Jack was sober during his two-month stint on the mountaintop, so while his alcoholism didn't leave him during this hiatus, what he wrote in his journal wasn't the booze talking.

As I state in the introduction to Desolation Peak, I think anyone who reads the Desolation journal will recognise Jack's symptoms. To me his mood swings are emotionally wrenching. His isolation was made worse by his unwillingness to engage in the nightly banter over shortwave radio with other lookouts, similar to his earlier problems on merchant ships where he alienated himself, unable to fit in. His social dis-ease wasn't strictly due to alcohol either.

Respectfully,

Charles

Note: Jack Kerouac, Desolation Peak: Collected Writings (2022) is published by Sal Paradise Press/Rare Bird. It was reviewed in Rock and the Beat Generation on January 8th, 2023. The double Kerouac image utilised at the head of this story is drawn from the most recent Beat Museum, San Francisco, newsletter.