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Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades
Based on unpublished letters, journalists, and interviews, this new look at the Beats focuses on the Western experiences of these seminal American writers. 25,000 first printing.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 25, 2012
It seemed absolutely appropriate to finish this book on Earth Day. It's a knock-out account of Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac's times as fire lookouts in the north Cascade range of Washington state - my backyard, albeit about an hour from my back door.
In its own way, Poets on the Peaks is a love story: love of nature and wilderness, brotherly love between the poets and the "community of lookouts," and if love can be applied to their, "craft or sullen art," and immersion in Buddhism, then love of those things too.
Gary Snyder is at the center of the chronicle as a senior student of Zen, constant writer, and embodiment of the woodsman ethos. Whalen and Kerouac share those first attributes, but were more the city guys, a little softer and greener than Snyder. It's amazing that all three make peace with solitude, even Kerouac whose peace was much more fitful and who was ultimately much happier, even ecstatic, getting off the mountain than on. (I once spent a month camping in a remote valley on Hawaii, and even with weekly supply trips to town found myself babbling away to my invisible friends around the camp fire. No easy ride that solitude business.)
Poets on the Peaks tracks the three in and out of the mountains. The book covers the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance (and the influence of mentor par excellence Kenneth Rexroth,) the pivotal Gallery 6 reading, (where Allen Ginsberg premiered "Howl," and Snyder and Whalen also read.) Snyder's encounters with Joe McCarthy's paranoid America are covered, as well as his Dharma Bum adventures with Kerouac, and his sojourns to Japan. Kerouac's times at home with ma'mere, his hassles getting published, and his writing disciplines, as well as his stay with William Burroughs in Mexico City are also documented. Whalen is the least chronicled of the three, and though we get a picture, it's more a snapshot than the portraits we get of Snyder and Kerouac. Whalen seemed to be less the public man than his friends. Author John Suitor fills things out with capsule histories of the national forests, the ins and outs of life as a lookout, and even the eventual deconstruction of the lookout structures.
Kerouac died in 1969, at the age of 47, near twenty years after his lookout and Dharma adventures, pretty much a sullen and defeated alcoholic, and I can't read of his later life and passage without profound sadness. He was ruined by booze, and his ruination was a loss, and a waste, and a long period of deep suffering. Whalen passed quietly in 1993. And Gary Snyder is the last man standing - not only among his two lookout/poet comrades, but with Michael McClure, the last of the generation.
All three men have absolutely secure reputations in American letters, but Snyder, still at the top of his game, and experiencing a resurgence with the publication of his latest volume, "Danger on Peaks," is an avatar of the ecological movement, and is ever green as an essayist, poet, and spiritual father of deep-ecology.
I loved this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the period, the poets, or American lit. I don't think it's a specialist's book, but I've loved these guys all my life, so maybe I'm a little besotted.
In its own way, Poets on the Peaks is a love story: love of nature and wilderness, brotherly love between the poets and the "community of lookouts," and if love can be applied to their, "craft or sullen art," and immersion in Buddhism, then love of those things too.
Gary Snyder is at the center of the chronicle as a senior student of Zen, constant writer, and embodiment of the woodsman ethos. Whalen and Kerouac share those first attributes, but were more the city guys, a little softer and greener than Snyder. It's amazing that all three make peace with solitude, even Kerouac whose peace was much more fitful and who was ultimately much happier, even ecstatic, getting off the mountain than on. (I once spent a month camping in a remote valley on Hawaii, and even with weekly supply trips to town found myself babbling away to my invisible friends around the camp fire. No easy ride that solitude business.)
Poets on the Peaks tracks the three in and out of the mountains. The book covers the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance (and the influence of mentor par excellence Kenneth Rexroth,) the pivotal Gallery 6 reading, (where Allen Ginsberg premiered "Howl," and Snyder and Whalen also read.) Snyder's encounters with Joe McCarthy's paranoid America are covered, as well as his Dharma Bum adventures with Kerouac, and his sojourns to Japan. Kerouac's times at home with ma'mere, his hassles getting published, and his writing disciplines, as well as his stay with William Burroughs in Mexico City are also documented. Whalen is the least chronicled of the three, and though we get a picture, it's more a snapshot than the portraits we get of Snyder and Kerouac. Whalen seemed to be less the public man than his friends. Author John Suitor fills things out with capsule histories of the national forests, the ins and outs of life as a lookout, and even the eventual deconstruction of the lookout structures.
Kerouac died in 1969, at the age of 47, near twenty years after his lookout and Dharma adventures, pretty much a sullen and defeated alcoholic, and I can't read of his later life and passage without profound sadness. He was ruined by booze, and his ruination was a loss, and a waste, and a long period of deep suffering. Whalen passed quietly in 1993. And Gary Snyder is the last man standing - not only among his two lookout/poet comrades, but with Michael McClure, the last of the generation.
All three men have absolutely secure reputations in American letters, but Snyder, still at the top of his game, and experiencing a resurgence with the publication of his latest volume, "Danger on Peaks," is an avatar of the ecological movement, and is ever green as an essayist, poet, and spiritual father of deep-ecology.
I loved this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the period, the poets, or American lit. I don't think it's a specialist's book, but I've loved these guys all my life, so maybe I'm a little besotted.
July 30, 2021
I read this for the second or third time, finished it maybe a month ago. This is my dream right here, to be a poet/writer/whatever on a peak. Hiking to the summit of Desolation 18 years ago was a momentous occasion for me and I wish I could return to the Cascades to at least hike a bit more, if only for a few days.
Suiter's research is thorough and his writing is swift and easy to read. If you are interested in the subjects, give it a read; if you are enchanted by fire lookouts, give it a read.
Suiter's research is thorough and his writing is swift and easy to read. If you are interested in the subjects, give it a read; if you are enchanted by fire lookouts, give it a read.
February 23, 2011
This is a little dry if you're not already interested, but if you ARE interested in Snyder, Whalen & Kerouac (and to a lesser extent Ginsberg), it's great stuff. An in-depth look at a really formative period and experience for all of them -- serving as fire-lookouts in the Cascades. The author does a great job of tracing how the experience plays out in their later work and how it fostered their interest in Zen. Beautiful photos, too.
August 15, 2021
An utterly riveting dive into a specific and pivotal part of Beat Generation lore. Suiter shares previously unreleased details about each writer’s time in the mountains and describes the impact that the Cascades had on their writing, their lives, and their legacy. He weaves in key aspects of the ongoing intersection of humans and their beloved, but mistreated wilderness.
September 7, 2021
Poets on the Peaks is everything a non-fiction account should be, erudite, well-researched and—most important—utterly readable. Don’t let the coffee table size of this book fool you. While the photos (both archival and the author’s own) are essential, the text transcends the prose of a photography book; every sentence needs to be read carefully. An essential read for anyone even marginally interested in the Beats, the Pacific Northwest Mountain ranges and Gary Snyder, whose biography transcends that of a mere Beat. The intellectual development of the founder of Earth Day and one of the more outspoken proponents of conservation is the foundation on which the book is built. And that foundation, by extension, is perched atop fire lookouts in the Skagit area of the Cascade Mountains, Sourdough and Desolation.
Since Gary Snyder is still with us, his definitive biography has not yet been written. However, one would be hard-pressed to find a book that delves into the crucial intellectual development of Snyder during his 20’s as he studied Japanese while working as a fire lookout atop mountains in the Cascades before his Journey East. Author John Suiter, blends the experiences of Snyder, Whalen and Kerouac while interspersing an analysis of their creative output, showing where certain ideas that appeared in later poems and prose germinated, often in the seclusion of lookouts atop Sourdough and Desolation. Poets on the Peaks also has a humorous tone and acknowledges the way posterity is remembering the three, with regional biases holding Kerouac’s lookout experience as less transcendent. One particularly hilarious section describes Kerouac’s partial breakdown after he runs out of cigarettes (though all three lookouts had the foresight to bring enough literature and Buddhist texts to last 5-7 weeks).
Poets on the Peaks recounts this most important era of the Beat Movement, since the 3-5 years when Snyder worked as a lookout and introduced other Beats to the forests and LO works is, unsurprisingly, the same year that saw the genesis of Howl and The Dharma Bums. While there are more detailed accounts of the Beats in SF during this time, Suiter does fine job of incorporating the years chronologically, with chapters also outlining Synder’s life in Japan as well as asides into his time in the merchant marines.
My only quibble: Written in 2002, the book did not and could not address the spate of recent studies addressing what the Forestry Service did wrong in their plan and execution of fire suppression. Gary Snyder, certainly not ignorant of Native American mores and methods, most certainly knew of their land management techniques which involved controlled burns as part of preservation, something only being discussed in the general population now. While Suiter does correctly point out that Snyder, a true woodsman, resorted to taking jobs that could hardly be considered environmental (making him a true voice of environmentalists for having seen all sides of the problems) after his completely unwarranted blacklisting from the US Forestry Service as well as the revoking of his passport for alleged communist sympathies, he never questions whether the lookouts and fire suppression techniques ultimately did more harm than good. Perhaps the only poet of the three to acknowledge this conundrum was Jack Kerouac, the least Buddhist and most pessimistic of the three writers. From the chapter on Kerouac:
--Although Kerouac greatly admired the skills of the “Forestry Bodhisattvas” like Blackie Burns, in the end, he knew that the big fires were nearly always put out by rain or snow. As for wilderness fire suppression, he asked, “What American loses, when a forest burns, and what did Nature do about it for a million years up to now?” Mostly Kerouac thought the Forest Service as a “front for the lumber interests, the net result of the whole thing being, what with Scott Paper Tissue and such companies logging out these woods year after year with the ‘cooperation’ of the forest service. . .people all over the world wiping their ass with the beautiful trees.” (pg. 218)
This book needs to be on the permanent shelf of anyone interested in Gary Snyder, Phil Whalen, Jack Kerouac, the Beats, and Pacific Northwest Forestry history. The photos, both archival and by the author, beautifully complement the prose. Anyone backpacking into the region or towards one of the three pilgrimage points where the poets look out, should also be familiar with Poets on the Peaks.
Since Gary Snyder is still with us, his definitive biography has not yet been written. However, one would be hard-pressed to find a book that delves into the crucial intellectual development of Snyder during his 20’s as he studied Japanese while working as a fire lookout atop mountains in the Cascades before his Journey East. Author John Suiter, blends the experiences of Snyder, Whalen and Kerouac while interspersing an analysis of their creative output, showing where certain ideas that appeared in later poems and prose germinated, often in the seclusion of lookouts atop Sourdough and Desolation. Poets on the Peaks also has a humorous tone and acknowledges the way posterity is remembering the three, with regional biases holding Kerouac’s lookout experience as less transcendent. One particularly hilarious section describes Kerouac’s partial breakdown after he runs out of cigarettes (though all three lookouts had the foresight to bring enough literature and Buddhist texts to last 5-7 weeks).
Poets on the Peaks recounts this most important era of the Beat Movement, since the 3-5 years when Snyder worked as a lookout and introduced other Beats to the forests and LO works is, unsurprisingly, the same year that saw the genesis of Howl and The Dharma Bums. While there are more detailed accounts of the Beats in SF during this time, Suiter does fine job of incorporating the years chronologically, with chapters also outlining Synder’s life in Japan as well as asides into his time in the merchant marines.
My only quibble: Written in 2002, the book did not and could not address the spate of recent studies addressing what the Forestry Service did wrong in their plan and execution of fire suppression. Gary Snyder, certainly not ignorant of Native American mores and methods, most certainly knew of their land management techniques which involved controlled burns as part of preservation, something only being discussed in the general population now. While Suiter does correctly point out that Snyder, a true woodsman, resorted to taking jobs that could hardly be considered environmental (making him a true voice of environmentalists for having seen all sides of the problems) after his completely unwarranted blacklisting from the US Forestry Service as well as the revoking of his passport for alleged communist sympathies, he never questions whether the lookouts and fire suppression techniques ultimately did more harm than good. Perhaps the only poet of the three to acknowledge this conundrum was Jack Kerouac, the least Buddhist and most pessimistic of the three writers. From the chapter on Kerouac:
--Although Kerouac greatly admired the skills of the “Forestry Bodhisattvas” like Blackie Burns, in the end, he knew that the big fires were nearly always put out by rain or snow. As for wilderness fire suppression, he asked, “What American loses, when a forest burns, and what did Nature do about it for a million years up to now?” Mostly Kerouac thought the Forest Service as a “front for the lumber interests, the net result of the whole thing being, what with Scott Paper Tissue and such companies logging out these woods year after year with the ‘cooperation’ of the forest service. . .people all over the world wiping their ass with the beautiful trees.” (pg. 218)
This book needs to be on the permanent shelf of anyone interested in Gary Snyder, Phil Whalen, Jack Kerouac, the Beats, and Pacific Northwest Forestry history. The photos, both archival and by the author, beautifully complement the prose. Anyone backpacking into the region or towards one of the three pilgrimage points where the poets look out, should also be familiar with Poets on the Peaks.
December 1, 2023
A gem of a book that reveals many facets of three extraordinary poets/writers - Gary Snyder, Philip Whelan, and Jack Kerouac. Such a unique take on their lives through their experiences as Forest Fire Lookouts in the Pacific Northwest while blending in their immersion with Buddhist philosophy and beliefs. Well done!
p.s. The photographs within the book are amazing - Ansel Adams quality.
p.s. The photographs within the book are amazing - Ansel Adams quality.
September 17, 2009
Wonderful, gracefully written book covering the early-mid fifties when first Gary Snyder, and then Philip Whalen and Kerouac, took summer jobs as fire lookout in the Cascade mountains to practice Buddhism and hone their writing. The book weaves biographies of the 3 authors back and forth, and the enhanced focus on just a few summers gives you a vivid, condensed sense of the passage of this crucial time. A great chapter on the famous Six Gallery reading in SF that everyone now says launched the beats - I've never read a better more engaging account. (Snyder headlined and read "A Berry Feast", following Ginsberg's homeric-orgasmic reading of "Howl", can you believe it?)
It's easy to Snyder and Whalen (who became a zen monk) as serious adepts, with Kerouac just dallying with Buddhism and partying all the time. But this book effectly challenges this, and I read it taking Kerouac's quest more seriously. He never learned the languages or went to Japan or developed much of a zazen practice (both of which S and W did), but the Sutras - especially the Diamond Sutra - remained powerful guides for him.
It's too bad that these kinds of jobs aren't there anymore; they use planes to fly around and scout the peaks now. What are us contemporary dharma revolutionaries to do?
It's easy to Snyder and Whalen (who became a zen monk) as serious adepts, with Kerouac just dallying with Buddhism and partying all the time. But this book effectly challenges this, and I read it taking Kerouac's quest more seriously. He never learned the languages or went to Japan or developed much of a zazen practice (both of which S and W did), but the Sutras - especially the Diamond Sutra - remained powerful guides for him.
It's too bad that these kinds of jobs aren't there anymore; they use planes to fly around and scout the peaks now. What are us contemporary dharma revolutionaries to do?
March 9, 2012
I love unique books. And this definitely fits that category. What begins as a book about two guys who spent summers as fire lookouts in the early fifties becomes a study of the intertwining of zen, poetry, and the solitude of nature contrasted with the realities of civilization in the off-season - particularly the political blacklisting of the McCarthy era. I would have liked to see more poetry included and more historic photos of the lookouts and area. However, the story of Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen deserves this telling. It was also refreshing to read a less sensational side of Kerouac. Having read the book, and thought a lot about solitude for the past couple years, it was interesting for me to compare the poets actions and reactions. I believe a majority of today's America has never spent a night alone in the wilderness, cut off from civilization (other than one daily hour of talk between lookouts) much less several weeks. How would I handle this - like Kerouac, who appreciated his solitude, but was conflicted and missed people? Would I have spent days upon days content with observing the mountains of little change? Would I have found religion? Would I have found this an opportunity to write my great novel?
February 16, 2017
John Suiter has compiled a masterpiece of decoding Snyder, Whalen and Kerouac and their relationships with each other, with Zen, with literature and with the North Cascades landscape. The perceptiveness and research that went into this book set it apart. Of course, the writers' own works tell part of the story, but Suiter draws from letters, third-party accounts, and his own interviews to fill out a story that is, after all, about solitude and its influence on these writers. Snyder and Whalen prove the more durable of the three—at ease when alone in the wilderness, building voices that would make their lives important as writers. Kerouac, seemingly terrified by isolation and craving his varied addictions (sex, speed, alcohol, nicotine), reflects early his manic and unsettled self—reflected so well in his books and self-destruction. Add to this poignant biography of three principal Beat writers Suiter's own artistry as a photographer. He illustrates the book with his own poetic black-and-white photographs, each both spare and rich in composition and perfect scenes that give us, the readers, a sense of the overwhelming austerity and beauty of the peaks where these poets once sat, as watchers.
September 5, 2009
This read a little like a magazine profile, which would have been fine if it were a magazine profile - somewhere classy, right, with intellectual pretensions - but it's a book and I want something a little meatier.
My other problems were personal problems I have with the Beat poets, but they do not bear going into. I did like the parts that talked about human interaction with nature a lot. (And also the mostly tangential stuff about the labor movement.)
My other problems were personal problems I have with the Beat poets, but they do not bear going into. I did like the parts that talked about human interaction with nature a lot. (And also the mostly tangential stuff about the labor movement.)
July 4, 2017
A part of my collection I will never part with..takes you on a journey into nature with the Beats with their eye view of rhe world.
October 10, 2017
The best biography of the Beats I've ever read. Their time as fire lookouts in the North Cascades is fascinating.
May 9, 2023
In the 1950s, several poets who would later become famous as the “Beat generation” worked in the fire towers of the Pacific Northwest. Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Jack Kerouac found that the job of a fire lookout meshed well with their desire to be in nature, to read, to write and to meditate. “Poets on the Peaks” is more than a book about men and mountains. Writer-photographer John Suiter has given us literary portraits of the leading beat poets. Taken as a whole, the book is a moving mountain experience and an authoritative record of a movement and an era. Read more at bookmanreader.blogsport.com .
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June 29, 2022I came across an online image of Kerouac I had never seen before and luckily the person who posted it included this book as the source of the photo. I was surprised I had never heard of it before. Astonishing amounts of detail here. Starts with Gary Snyder's first year on fire lookout and how he got interested in Zen and continues through Kerouac's experiences. A fantastic companion piece to The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels.
February 28, 2016
The Beats seem like they were in another country; I don't think we heard about them where I grew up. I know for sure my grandfather lost his mind over the Beatles, and then died not long after, so perhaps he did hear about these guys. However, they were so influential, and this book is more about Gary Snyder and Phillip Whalen than Kerouac and the rabid rejection of capitalism and embrace of bohemia, so overall, it was a fascinating look into the nature experiences that helped inform their art and delve deeper into Zen and really bring it to the US, which is immensely appealing to me. The North Cascades were so remote then, and the photos are stunning.
Snyder wrote about the art of mountain watching- "more than enough time for all things to happen.- Aldo Leopold uses the phrase Think like a Mountain. I didn't hear that until later but mountain watching is like mountain being or mountain sitting. How do you watch a mountain? Nothing's going to happen in any time frame that you can consider- except the light changes on it. the changing light on the mountain is like the changing thoughts in my mind..."
Then I'm alone in a glass house on a ridge
encircled by chiming mountains
with one sun roaring through the house all day
and the others crashing through the glass all night
conscious even when sleeping.
Phillip Whalen, Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Snyder wrote about the art of mountain watching- "more than enough time for all things to happen.- Aldo Leopold uses the phrase Think like a Mountain. I didn't hear that until later but mountain watching is like mountain being or mountain sitting. How do you watch a mountain? Nothing's going to happen in any time frame that you can consider- except the light changes on it. the changing light on the mountain is like the changing thoughts in my mind..."
Then I'm alone in a glass house on a ridge
encircled by chiming mountains
with one sun roaring through the house all day
and the others crashing through the glass all night
conscious even when sleeping.
Phillip Whalen, Sourdough Mountain Lookout
August 16, 2012
A really great and inspiring book! The writing and the photos are both beautiful. The unique thing about this book is that it is as much a portrait of the mountains themselves as of the poets. It's also a well researched account of the early days of Snyder and Whalen, their friendship with Kerouac and Ginsberg, and how these mountains played a part in all of their development as writers and as people.
July 11, 2007
An essential spark that helped to ignite my senior thesis at Middlebury College. The photos and writing in this book are beautiful, and will make you wish that you had lived the life of the Beats. This is the nice, not the naughty side of these guys.
May 11, 2009
the growth of poetry on the west coast - berry good!
July 5, 2009
A beautiful book about the poets, such as Gary Synder, influenced by their time spent in the Pacific Cascades
October 27, 2012
Tales of Kerouac, Snyder, and Whalen in their role as fire lookouts in watchtowers. Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Beats.
June 8, 2009
Great way to see what things were really like for "Japhy"(Gary Snyder) and Jack.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews