Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades [Hardcover]

John Suiter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 16, 2002

A beautifully illustrated portrait of Beat icons Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen and the years in the Cascades high country that shaped their lives and work. . This is John Suiter's first book, and it evolved from a magazine assignment that took him to Jack Kerouac's remote fire lookout on Desolation Peak on the fortieth anniversary of the publication of The Dharma Bums. For two weeks in the summer of 1995, Suiter-an East Coast city-dweller all his life-lived in Kerouac's still-standing fire lookout, making photographs for his magazine project. Meanwhile, the awesome beauty and profound solitude of the surrounding North Cascades worked their magic-as it had for Kerouac and countless others since. In 1996, Suiter met the poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, who had also worked as fire lookouts on peaks in the North Cascades in the 1950s. It had been Snyder-the real-life model for Kerouac's fictive "Japhy Ryder"-who had first come into the Upper Skagit country as a fire lookout in 1952 and blazed the way for Whalen and Kerouac to follow. Suiter returned to the North Cascades during the next few summers for further shooting-hikes on Crater, Sourdough, and Sauk mountains. Illustrated with thirty-five beautiful photographs, Poets on the Peaks tells how the solitary mountain adventures of three young men helped to form the literary, spiritual, and environmental values of a generation. Based on scores of previously unpublished letters and journals, plus recent interviews with Snyder and Whalen and several others, Poets on the Peaks creates a group portrait of Kerouac, Snyder, and Whalen that transcends the tired urban clichs of the "Beat" life. Poets on the Peaks is about the development of a community of poets, including the famous Six Gallery reading of October 1955, and contains unexpected cameos by fellow poets and mountain-climbers Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Rexroth, Philip Lamantia, and Michael McClure. Poets on the Peaks is also a book about Dharma and the years of Dharma Bums-from the 1951 roadside revelation in the Nevada desert that led Gary Snyder to drop out of academia and head for Japan, to Kerouac's lonely vigil with The Diamond Sutra on Desolation Peak, to Philip Whalen's ordination as a Zen prie Finally, Poets on the Peaks is the story of the birth of a wilderness ethic, as well as a photographic homage to the Cascades landscape, a landscape virtually unchanged since these men journeyed there thanks to the environmental protections they helped inspire.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Suiter is a Boston-based freelance photographer and writer whose work has appeared in numerous national and international magazines over the last ten years. He lives and works in Boston, where he is an instructor at the New England School of Photography.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (April 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582431485
• ISBN-13: 978-1582431482
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 8.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,047,044 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beat Beginnings:The right place at the right time..., November 9, 2003

By 

Ian McIntyre (Miami, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades (Hardcover)

John Suiter's work on the founding fathers of Beat poetry and prose is a marvelous read. Suiter takes us along the trail through post war America and ties together the Beat poets, Jack Kerouac, McCarthyism, San Francisco and the North Cascades Forest Service Fire Lookout system of the 1950's. Imagine the poet/Zen Buddhist Gary Snyder being blacklisted from working for the Forest Service! Do you want to know how Jack Kerouac got the idea for his Dharma Bums work? What was it like spending a month and a half completely alone on top of a mountain in the Pacific Northwest, looking for the telltale smoke of a developing forest fire? Do you know what a "lightning stool" is, what you do with it and would you like to see a photograph of one? What was it like being at the famous Six Gallery poetry reading in 1955 when Allen Ginsberg first read "Howl"? If these questions interest you, or if you want to know about the origins of Beat writings-this is the book to get. Author Suiter launches the reader away through Old Mexico to visit with young Robert Mitchum as Christ in a glass coffin and William "Junky" Burroughs, up through Yosemite to camp with Kerouac and Snyder, a stop in San Francisco at City Lights Bookstore and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and finally Japan and Hozomeen, and the Void from Desolation. A delightful Masterpiece of fact and photographs!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Covers beautiful Cascade Mountain scenes and peaks, November 7, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades (Hardcover)

Writer-photographer Suiter provides a literary portrait of Beat era poets Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac in Poets On The Peaks, which centers around their early experiences as fire lookouts in the 1950s. As such, Poets On The Peaks provides a hard book to easily categorize: it covers beautiful Cascade Mountain scenes and peaks, fire lookouts, and literature and biography alike. The writings of these three juxtapose nicely with the photos and images, making this a recommended gift choice for the holiday season.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book., July 20, 2002

By 

David B. Mcgrath "David McGrath" (Pennsauken, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the Cascades (Hardcover)

This book is large and strong, with beautiful pictures of the Cascades. It is also filled with stories about and interviews with Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac from their younger days. It helped to fill in some blanks for me on what helped make them the men they became.