Kerouac wrote this right after On the Road, and it’s the calmer and better book. Ray Smith is Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder is Gary Snyder, who was then a young poet in Berkeley translating Han Shan and heading for a Zen monastery in Japan. They meet, and Japhy hauls him up the Matterhorn in the Sierra, which is where the book comes alive — two guys with cheap gear scrambling in the dark, Japhy running down a scree field whooping while Ray sits down and refuses to move. Ray comes home wanting the whole program: Buddhism, poverty, a rucksack, no job. There’s the Six Gallery reading, a lot of wine, and then a summer alone in a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascades, where the silence is harder than he expected.
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