[Sally II]

Okay, now I remember a real duzy: Dharma Bums Jack Kerouac. I had that for a "Literature of the Wilderness" class. It was so stupid. It had nothing to do with the wilderness, and everything to do with over-spiritualizing selfish, hedonistic impulses. I followed that by trying to read Peter Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Snow Leopard --which was all the same sort of stuff: psychodelic drugs, buddhism, idealization of primitive cultures, and stereotyping and belittling Christians.

[beckett]

I agree about Matthiesson completely, and mostly about Kerouac too, but the latter deserves a bit of a dispensation I think. He was never much of a lefty, and legend has it that a stack of National Reviews was found by his body on the day he died in his mother's house. I think Jack rethought a lot of stuff in his final years.

[redhead]

"I followed that by trying to read Peter Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Snow Leopard --which was all the same sort of stuff: psychodelic drugs, buddhism, idealization of primitive cultures, and stereotyping and belittling Christians.

LOL! I had the same experience with this one! But I read it all the way through. It was like running down a steep hill...if you try to stop, you'll go a** over teakettle, so you just keep going faster and faster till you get to the bottom.