I am reading Jack Kerouac's 1958, semi-autobiographical novel for the umpteenth time. In this book, many of the characters are thinly veiled portraits of famous literary beatniks like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, and Michael McClure.
Key passages in the novel relate to Kerouac's introduction to the mountains. So, we are treated to his escapades on Matterhorn Peak in the Sierras, and Desolation Peak in the Cascades. (Of course, as an aside this was the year of the first ascent of the Nose on El Cap.)
The reader is treated to many memorable - often irreverent - wine induced ravings, all of which prophetically give way to hippies and the 1960-70s counterculture ... "give me a slug on that jug," "The Rucksack Revolution," "Work-Produce-Consume-Work-Produce-Consume," and of course, we are all going to turn into a bunch of, "crazy zen poets." Sixty-plus years later, it's still worth reading.
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