That Some of the Dharma should be published now, forty years after of his first great success, On the Road, must be due ultimately to two causes: the recent resurgence of interest in the Beat literary movement and the emerging popularity of Buddhism in America.
Although parts of the notebooks were shared from time to time with Beat comrades-the journal was intended always for Allen Ginsberg-the completed manuscript was rejected repeatedly by publishers despite Kerouac’s literary successes. Ignatius, Dante, and Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. he enthusiastically began Some of the Dharma as a set of reading notes, but as the months passed, it evolved into a vast and complex all-encompassing work of nonfiction into which he poured his life, chronicling his thinking, incorporating reading notes, prayers, poems, blues poems, haiku, meditations, letters, conversations, journal entries, stories, and more.” References to Buddhist texts and writers abound, but Kerouac also lets us know what he thinks of James Joyce, Boethius, St.
As Viking editor David Stanford writes in his introduction: “. Written between 19, Some of the Dharma is a reading, thinking, and writing journal dedicated in large measure to the expression of Kerouac’s understanding and misunderstanding of and excitement about Buddhism. The publication of Jack Kerouac’s Some of the Dharma is a kind of event for American Buddhism.
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