Jack Kerouac: The Pseudo-Saint of Mindfulness

What do we want from our idols? Devotion to their ideals, of course, a keen sense of self-mythos, preferably an exalted capacity to live as they preach. On a cursory glance, Jack Kerouac appears to meet these standards. The Buddhist Years, a collection of Kerouac’s previously unpublished drafts, diary entries, poems, and scribbles, excavating his three-year infatuation with and subsequent estrangement from Buddhist theology, occasions more serious scrutiny. I approached it skeptically, my adolescent infatuation and disenchantment with Kerouac weighing heavy on my mind.