A lifetime ago, I remember reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the best known literary product of the beatnik era. I’ve never forgotten the energy of that book that set off a generation on their own trips. Apparently, the magic of the novel is still alive. Carina Hoak recently posted a related synchronicity on Facebook. After reading On the Road, she picked up another book and here’s what happened.
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I’ve recently bought myself a book entitled “Siddhartha”, by Hermann Hesse. While leafing through it at home, I came across this following passage (much to my surprise):
“In the parlance of cinema, Siddhartha would qualify as a ‘road movie.’ But because the protagonist’s personal motto throughout his various and sometimes contradictory stages of development remains “Thinking, waiting, fasting,” and because he wanders barefoot in an age (circa 500 B.C.) when there was nary a pedal to push to the metal, he logs in a tiny fraction of the mileage accumulated by, say, the characters in On the Road. (…)
“Siddhartha nonetheless does bear a superficial resemblance to Kerouac’s novel, in which, despite their relentless pursuit of kicks, the beatniks maintain a fascination with Eastern philosophy, and, however crudely, demonstrate a hunger for spiritual illumination. For his part, Siddhartha also takes a detour through the pleasurelands of flesh and fermentation before moving on to more refined ground.”
Small detail: I had been reading On the Road a week ago.
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I read Siddhartha back when I was reading everything that Hermann Hesse wrote. Loved Damian, too. I don’t remember any preface with references to Kerouac or On the Road in the edition of Siddhartha I read, but I do know that, like Carina, I read the Hesse novel around the same time I read On the Road.
An added synchronistic touch: After I saw Carina’s post at this Facebook synchronicity site, I added a post about the link between synchronicity and travel. Carina e-mailed me saying that what I said about travel was very true. She’d just returned from a trip and that was when she’d read On the Road and started Siddhartha. – Rob
One of my personal projects is writing a journal with all the coincidences between Kerouac and myself. When I first started reading his writings in 2001, I hit the motherlode of coincidences between his life and mine. It was a strange experience.
Now Carina should try Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, then meet the Merry Prankster's in Tom Wolfe's Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flaked Streamline Baby.
Interesting parallels there, Sansego. And what a weird synchro with St Brieuc!
– Trish
I know plenty of people who do not like Kerouac. It took me more than a dozen years before I finally picked up a Kerouac book, and I had amazing coincidences as I read several of his books and biographies about him. Because of all the similarities between Kerouac and myself, he has become my favourite writer by far.
His "Satori in Paris" was especially meaningful to me, because it was like reading about my own life. Like Kerouac, I had "argued" with a French person about how to pronounce "St. Brieuc." Out of all the places in France (considering that 20% of the population lives in the Paris metro region), a French sailor I met and became friends with when his submarine visited the Navy base I was stationed at in Italy actually lives in a small town next to St. Brieuc, so I've been there quite a few times.
great story – and who doesn't love kerouac! and interestingly enough, i'm leaving early next week on a "road trip" – already have a bag of books in the car!
Nicely put, Aleksander – maybe there's something of Timothy Leary in all of us.
Who are you, people? Which chain of events has brought here? Do you also like Kerouac/Hesse/Dali/Van Gogh/avant-garde/mysticism/something weird? I suppose there is some kind of a pattern how people start thinking about synchronicity. I know I've been weird all my life. I am straight as a rod (a nice expression I've read somewhere), but there is still something of Timothy Leary in me.