Visions of Gary

Japhy Ryder, a character based on poet-environmentalist and man of letters Gary Snyder, figures prominently in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums (1958). He's presented as the epitome of the Zen Lunatic, a frequently encountered order of beings in the book. Japhy is Zen, he is a lunatic, and wiser than a god and more down to earth than cornpone. He can do anything. He can be anything. He is the center of Ray Smith's (Jack Kerouac's) world in the book, and Ray/Jack cries when Japhy sails off to Japan to become a Zen monk -- on a foundation grant.

I've been asked "Did you know Gary Snyder? Did you ever meet him?" And the short answer is "No," but then someone will tap me on the shoulder and say, "Actually, you did. You just don't remember."

OK. Where, when, how?

In the mid '80s I was deeply involved in the Sacramento arts and cultural community, and part of that meant I was going to meetings and receptions and such practically every day and night that I wasn't involved in rehearsals. 

Gary Snyder at the time was a member of the California Arts Council and if I recall correctly (ha!) he was teaching writing at UC Davis, and that meant that from time to time he would come down to the Valley from his ranch up in the Sierra foothills and mingle a bit with us lowlanders. What I can visualize are the flyers and ads for the retreats he would hold for writers and Zen bhikkhus at his place up the hill, and how they seemed at the time to be wildly expensive ($150 for a week? Ack!) 

But he was a celebrity, a major literary celebrity in our midst, and some people said he was worth every penny. 

I still say "No," but I'm told "Yes." 

I was colleagues with some of the staff of the Arts Council and knew a member or two, and I was sometimes invited to their events. I worked on projects with some of the faculty at UC Davis. And what is suggested is that my contact with Gary Snyder happened at a couple of receptions for artists and writers sponsored by the Arts Council or UC Davis. Those events are something of a blur to me these days. There were often hundreds of people drinking and mixing and mingling and laughing and carrying on the way they do. Apparently Gary Snyder was pointed out to me, surrounded by a cloud of worshipful fans, very barely visible, blondish bangs, crusty hooded eyes, and a toothy grin flashing now and then. "Don't you want to meet him?" "Not really," said I. "He seems to be having a good time, though. Loves that adulation."

Apparently I was taken over to the cloud and introduced to him, apparently we nodded to one another and maybe shook hands, and that, as far as I can tell, was that. We retreated to our corners. It may have happened pretty much the same way a time or two after that, but I honestly don't recall. 

Let's say we didn't hit it off. Part of it, I know, is that I was very anti-celebrity in those days. I was much more interested in helping to build up the talents of the many folks who weren't celebrities but who were creative and eager and had much to offer -- if only somebody would pay attention. Of course, then as now the conundrum was that if you're not a celebrity no one will pay attention. I had no inclination to fawn over any celebrity in those days and tended to try to avoid them as much as I could, and when I couldn't, I kept any contact to a minimum. "Hullo, howareya, nice to meecha, bye." 

I knew who Gary Snyder was, knew some of what he was famous for, and I knew he was the inspiration for the character Japhy Ryder in "Dharma Bums."  I would learn later that he really didn't care for Jack Kerouac's depiction of him in the book and he was annoyed that he had to dispel misconceptions about himself and his Zen lunacy based on what Kerouac had written. He wasn't really like that. You see. Kerouac wrote a novel not a first person non-fiction report. It wasn't journalism. It was a story, much of it invented. 

And I think maybe he was annoyed that Kerouac became obsessed with him. It went well beyond friendship into realms that are hard to quantify. I don't know what was going on in Jack's mind, but from the novel, there's a suggestion that Ray/Jack wanted to become Japhy/Gary. And so maybe Gary Snyder couldn't escape to Japan soon enough. 

Leaving Ray/Jack on the dock to cry bitter tears of loss and longing.

This was always the thing with Kerouac's writing. There is some deep-seated longing for... something unnamed, even unmentionable... in the characters Jack bases on himself. There is someone else who exemplifies what he wants to be, particularly Neal Cassady and Gary Snyder. They are these bigger-than-life shining, incredible characters who completely dominate Jack's character. They take over everything, life itself, they are life itself, and Jack's character wonders why he isn't like them, can't be like them, and who made them this way in the first place.

Japhy/Gary is wild, untamed, gritty, funny, and wicked. Wicked smart to a New Englander like Kerouac, but wicked bad too, given Kerouac's strict Catholic upbringing. Was it the Zen that made him that way? 

Japhy/Gary is wild and uninhibited and would drink and do drugs and get naked and sing and dance and fuck with abandon right there in front of everybody, and Jack's character would be amazed and wish he could be like him and would try and fail and be mortified. How does a Zen lunatic do it?

Snyder insists he was not like that, not really, though there may be pictures and receipts. The issue is that Kerouac was writing a novel about events in the mid 1950s, while Gary was still a graduate student at UC Berkeley. The wild man, the untamed Zen lunatic that he describes Japhy to be is almost an impossibility in that context. That kind of non-conformity would have been stamped out almost instantly in those days; it could not have happened. Period. 

Just look what happened to Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley a decade later. There could not have been something even wilder in Japhy's time. 

The Gary Snyder I must have seen 30 years later was diminutive, smartly-casually dressed like the professor he was (with a twist, like monk's cloth wide britches and huaraches or hiking boots.) He laughed easily among his cloud of fans, he drank the way most people did in those days, and he adored being adored. He was used to it. 

In other words, there was nothing really abnormal or particularly noteworthy about him at all.

I still say I never met Gary Snyder, never knew him, but memories get jogged and come back and I find out that things I was sure never happened actually did. Things I had forgotten were still vivid in other people's memories. Life once led but left behind is still the active narrative in some minds.

Gary is 90-something now and I assume still lives up at his ranch or outpost or retreat in the Sierra foothills. He will probably live forever at this rate.

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Little bit of an Update: 

After I wrote this post I went to the Google Machine to see if I could pin down any real memories of Gary Snyder, and I came across a link to a story in the Nevada County Press or whatever about a film of a conversation between Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison. The story was from 2019. I found the film, made by Will Hearst III in 2009, "Practice of the Wild", and I was more or less stunned. Yes, I had memories and visions of Gary from way back, but mostly in the mid-'80s when he was actually around in the same places I was quite a bit. I recalled several times we met, despite his cloud of worshipful fans, and even without them when they weren't there, and I managed to recall who among my friends and colleagues were his friends or colleagues. And no, we didn't get along.

It was a strange feeling, very strange. How very much I have forgotten. I'm reluctant to say that whole phase of my life is gone, but realistically, without a trigger, it is.

 Hm.

A video that won't embed:

https://youtu.be/oFg7K4vAGnk?t=880

Another addendum:

From Jack Kerouac's long letter to Gary Snyder, December 1957:

.have no time now, just adding p.s. to Allen’s letter, I haven’t written to you for the odd Mexico reasons of no post offices and stamp facilities for overseas etc. and couldn’t get up in time …….but I think of you all the time….more than you know—— On Desolation, well I’ll tell you later, it’s a long beautiful tale quietude….Meanwhile I have been writing furious, for this  year for instance I have three new novels and new perms (poems??) and now all of a sudden 2 contracts with publishers in NY here this very day it’s taking place…..have great new way of transliterating Diamond Sutra that will at last spread the diamond sutra in the west and maybe even in the east, all Sanskrit terms out of it, but translated into simple English, I cry when I read it sometimes and I read it every day……that too I’ll send you later….meanwhile be you the Gary Snyder of my dreams…be you sad deep Gary, sad funny crazy Gary, and be bejesus god we’ll go climb mountains again soon              Jack

Emphasis mine. I just sit with that in wonder.

 Further noting: A) One of my tasks during this practice period and Sesshin is learning to be less judgmental of others. I have a long way to go. 

B) Reading Jack's letter to Gary, however, brings forth some judgement. 

If I were a Zen master receiving this letter, as Gary Snyder was in the budding stages of becoming, I would be alarmed. I mentioned earlier that Jack had become obsessed with Gary, almost as if he were determined to become Gary Snyder somehow, absorb him, devour him. And this letter is, I think, proof. What is a bhikku to do with something like this, let alone a Zen master? Would it even be possible for Gary to (gently) guide Jack away from this obsession? Maybe. I don't think so. I'm not at all sure Gary had it in him -- even as a Zen master -- in any case. The course of gentle guidance was always in conflict with Gary's determined forcefulness. I can well imagine Gary giving Jack the back of his hand, hard, with no explanation and storming away. 

This brings forth so much sadness and compassion for both of them within me. It's hard to bear without breaking down completely. It wasn't long after this that Jack went on his long drunken bender into madness and death. 

And Gary became the iconic Man of Letters he is today and likely always was or saw himself to be. An image, perhaps, not a being. 

Which is what I encountered in the person thirty-forty twenty-five-thirty years ago and... found wanting.

This is one of those rounds of the Dharma wheel I continue to work with/on. For-ever.

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On the other hand (remember, Zen is contradiction) if I were a Zen master, which I have no intention of being, I wouldn't be alarmed by that letter from Jack at all. No, I'd figure instead that he was making progress and his expressions of devotion to Gary were positive signs of immanence and Awakening. Or maybe not. People come to the Awakened Mind in their own way and their own time. Expressions of devotion to someone else can be over the top and it's OK. Like everything else, that too will pass. 

If Jack would sit for a while... just sit with no expectations... he'd come around to see what he needed to.