When On the Road finally saw the light of day in 1957, fame proved to be Kerouac's undoing. William Plummer writes insightfully:
For nearly a decade he hungered for recognition, but when the public at last chose to take notice it would choose to measure the least part of him. In forums and on talk shows, he would be queried about drugs, kicks, promiscuity. No one would understand or care to credit the spiritual underpinnings of On the Road; interviewers would regard him quizzically when he suggested that his life and work constituted a single effort to force God to pull back the veil and show Himself in the althogether. (The Holy Goof: A Biography of Neal Cassady, Paragon, 1981, p. 104)
Vanity of Duluoz, pp. 176-7:
Pascal says it better than I do when he says:"WHAT SHALL WE GATHER FROM ALL OUR DARKNESS IF NOT A CONVICTION OF OUR UNWORTHINESS?" and he adds to show you right path: "There are perfections in Nature which demonstrate that She is the image of God" -- Timmy [Jack's dead cat] sittin like a lion, Big Slim in his prime, Pop in his prime, me in my careless 1943 youth, you, all -- "and imperfections" -- our decay and going-down, all of us -- "to assure us that She is no more than His image." I believe that.
"God is dead" made everybody sick to their stomachs because they all know what I just said, and Pascal said, and Paschal means Resurrection.
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