Between the lines of some of Jack Kerouac’s best writing is the veiled
presence of the author’s chosen patron saint, St. Therese de Lisieux.
Known the world over as the Little Flower of the Little Way, the
famously on-the-road Kerouac admired French-born Therese Martin for her
childlike faith and guilelessness. It was to her that he directed many
of his prayers; it was from her that he received comfort. He must have
been enchanted by the images of little lambs and fragrant roses that
were associated with the young saint, for they appear in his books over
and over again. Much of his work is infused with the unabashedly
childlike innocence associated with St. Therese. Indeed, her aura
pulsates throughout his books as if it is the very heartbeat of his
prose.
St. Therese and Kerouac shared a great deal in common. Both were
life-long seekers of the reunion with the Divine. Both had been gifted
with rare faculties that allowed them to see the world through ancient
eyes and appreciate all of creation with their poetic souls. Both of
them revered, and were contented in, nature.
In her autobiography, Story of a Soul, Therese describes an
idyllic childhood in which she played outdoors with her sisters and took
daily walks with her father. During one walk, her father plucked a
little white flower that was growing from a patch of moss in a wall made
of stone and gave it to her. It was not lost on the little girl that he
had taken care to pull the blossom out with the roots still intact.
Using this as a teaching moment, her father explained that God had taken
ineffable care to nurture and preserve this little flower. It was a
watershed moment for Therese, who later recalled, “While I listened I
believed I was hearing my own story.” Even as a young child, Therese was
exquisitely aware that the choices we make in how we live our lives
have an impact on the living world around us.
So, too, was it essential to Kerouac that he live in respectful harmony
with animals and nature. As an author, Kerouac wrote this veneration
right into his work. Tender references to creatures great and small as
well as a burning appreciation for the majestic awesomeness of this
world make for some of Kerouac’s most lyrical, memorable, quotable
prose.
Significantly, in his first published work, Kerouac gives to the autobiographical family whose story is chronicled in The Town and The City
St. Therese’s own surname, which was Martin. But St. Therese’s
influence can be seen and felt in countless other ways throughout the
entire body of his work. In The Dharma Bums, for example, the
opening scene shows Kerouac, who has just hopped a freight train,
meeting a bum on the lam. Pulling a tiny clipping from his pocket, the
stranger explains that he has carried this copy of a St. Therese prayer
for years and that he reads it “most every day.” From then on, Kerouac
refers to this man as “the little St. Therese bum.”
In a sense, these opening chapters of The Dharma Bums are a
symbolic gift from Kerouac to St. Therese. They are Kerouac’s attempt to
provide St. Therese with closure on an unsettling episode she recounted
in her autobiography:
During the walks I took with Papa, he loved to have me bring alms to
the poor we met on the way. On one occasion we met a poor man who was
dragging himself along painfully on crutches. I went up to give him a
coin. He looked at me with a sad smile and refused my offering since he
felt he wasn't poor enough to accept alms. I cannot express the feeling
that went through my heart. I wanted to console this man and instead I
had given him pain or so I thought. The poor invalid undoubtedly guessed
at what was passing through my mind, for I saw him turn around and
smile at me. Papa had just bought me a little cake, and I had an intense
desire to give it to him, but I didn't dare. However, I really wanted
to give him something he couldn't refuse, so great was the sympathy I
felt toward him. I remembered having heard that on our First Communion
Day we can obtain whatever we ask for, and this thought greatly consoled
me. Although I was only six years old at this time, I said: "I'll pray
for this poor man the day of my First Communion." I kept my promise
five years later, and I hope God answered the prayer He inspired me to direct to Him in favor of one
of His suffering members.
It is as though Kerouac attempted to write into the script of the
universe a new connection that would enable St. Therese to feel the
satisfaction she had been denied in the moment. Breathing new life into
the old cripple, Kerouac gave him legs strong enough to jump a boxcar
and brought him all the way from France to America where, with the help
of the sustaining prayers of the little saint, her devotee rides the
rails.
Two hundred-some pages later, Kerouac invokes the spirit of St. Therese
in a rush of ecstatic prose. Writing of “little flowers that grew around
the rocks” and “children and the innocent,” Kerouac vows to love as she
loved: “Okay world,” I said, “I’ll love ya.”
Kerouac’s friends were witness to the author’s exceptional powers of
observation. They say that his eyes functioned like movie cameras,
capturing images that he then stored in a recall vault so flawless they
nicknamed him “Memory Babe.” Thus there can be no doubt that Kerouac
knew what he was about when he concluded The Dharma Bums. He surely knew
that the final words uttered by the twenty-four-year-old nun on her
deathbed were, “My God, I love you!” And so, when we read on the last
page of The Dharma Bums,
…I said, “God, I love you” and looked up to the sky and really meant it.
we recognize that Kerouac is wrapping the ending right back around to
the beginning pages where we were introduced to “the little St. Therese
bum who was the first genuine Dharma Bum I’d met.”
In his work and in the way he lived his life, Jack Kerouac did his best
to shine a light upon and to follow the Little Way of St. Therese. I’d
like to think that she was among the first to embrace him as he stepped
from this world into the next.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
