There
goes my hero – the life and inspiration of Gary Snyder
One
of the first signs of ageing is that you start to lose your heroes. Sporting
heroes retire, get old and appear from time to time on the television looking
like stooped old men. You remember them in their magnificent prime and are
filled with sadness. There are once-great sporting teams of the past in lots of
different sports who reunite from time to time minus members. The Reaper takes
a few a year.
Musical
heroes are slightly different, in that their finest moments were usually
recorded and can be played forever. An example for me is that I can sit in
comfort and listen to the new remixing of The White Album by The Beatles and I do
not have to be confronted by the fact that John Lennon has been dead for nearly
forty years, George Harrison for nearly twenty, and that Paul McCartney and Sir
Richard Starkey are old men. It’s only when a world tour comes around again
that the public are reminded that their heroes are crumbling. Mick Jagger
soldiers bravely on, still a Street Fighting Man.
Perhaps
literary heroes are slightly different, because with age comes a growing
respect, a large body of work and the wisdom of elder statesman / statesperson
status. It is definitely true of my hero, Gareth Sherman Snyder. He was born in
1930 and is fast approaching ninety. To my continued delight he remains a
vigorous force in the world. His recent writing is some of his best. I have
experienced some of his great writing in reverse, mining back through his
output from the 1950s and digging deep into what he refers to as the different
strata of his writing.
I
have been thinking for a while about why he is my hero, whilst others have
fallen in estimation (Kerouac), or faded away (Liverpool FC) or been tarnished
by later efforts (Led Zeppelin).
[To
clarify: the more I have learned about the kind of person Jack Kerouac was, the
less his writing has appealed. My love for Liverpool FC remains, but I have had
to admit in the last twenty years that they have been eclipsed by others. LedZep were colossal, but the musical output of Robert Plant continues to disappoint
me.]
I
conclude that Gary Snyder remains a hero for me because of what he is not as
much as the person that he is. He is a shape-shifter, not easy to define. He
has had the good fortune of a publishing career of more than fifty years, and
in that time lots of reviewers have tried to slot him neatly into a category
and have been foiled.
He’s
not a Beat.
One
of the ways that I measure how great a bookshop is going to be is to seek out
certain books and how they are classified. In the UK Snyder’s writing is rarely
stocked, but when it is it is often bracketed with the Beats. I’m not going to
get complicated about this because for many Snyder falls neatly into this
category. He was caricatured by Jack Kerouac (more of that later) and had a
long friendship with Allen Ginsberg.
Just
when things were getting interesting, and Kerouac in particular was rising to
stardom, Gary Snyder slipped away. In 1959 he shipped out to Japan, and in the
same year that his first collection of poems was published, he was immersing
himself in Buddhist practice in Kyoto. For the tumultuous early years of the
1960s he was conspicuous by his absence. The physical separation helped to distance
him from the Beat Generation. He may still share many of their values. He is an
advocate of free-thinking, free-form writing. As the movement fizzled out and the
conservative middle-ground overwhelmed it in the 1960s he was a long way away,
doing something more serious and requiring greater discipline.
The
impression that I have though is that Snyder is a faithful friend and has
maintained deep friendships with literary contemporaries. His collected letters
to and from Allen Ginsberg are full of affection and generosity.
He’s
not a hippie.
Gary
Snyder was at the Human Be-In in January 1967, and the photograph of him with
Ginsberg chanting and holding finger-cymbals colours the opinions of many. I
feel that his commitment to some of the values of the movement go much deeper
than many others. In many ways, he is much more than a hippie – he has been
constant in his commitment to some of the core values a long, long time after
the young people of the park have given up, bought houses in the suburbs and
put on neck-ties.
Much
of his writing continues to champion the rights of animals. His love for
non-human life runs through much of his poetry. It wasn’t a passing phase for
him. He still believes that a change in thinking is required in the West in our
attitude to our fellow travellers on the planet. It’s a simple and tight bit of
thinking – if we regarded animals as equal to humans many of our really bad
decisions could be avoided.
I pledge
allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings
who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful
interpenetration for all.[1]
He’s
not a hippie because he has always taken responsibility for his beliefs. By the
1970s the dream was waning and people were understanding that some of the ideas
were going to take some real work to be realised. Snyder got involved in local
issues. He did his bit in service of his people by working in Jerry Brown’s
administration, and became deeply involved in his surroundings. He settled in
the Sierra foothills and took part in the founding of a community there,
building his own home with the help of friends and eventually completing a
zendo for the purpose of meditation and community activities. Out of this, in
fact, is the link to perhaps the best-known soundbite from the man who does not
value soundbites.
More concretely,
no transformation without our feet on the ground. Stewardship means, for most
of us, find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from
there—the tiresome but tangible work of school boards, county supervisors,
local foresters—local politics.
This
comes as part of Turtle Island, the writing for which Snyder received the
Pulitzer Prize in 1975. He realised that the free-thinking excitement of the
1960s needed to be backed up by real work in the 1970s. He has remained
faithful to this ever since.
He
can’t properly be called an environmentalist either.
He
evades the criticism of being a tree-hugger because he is a realist. His love
for planet, fauna and flora is beyond doubt. However, he points out that human
beings are part of a much bigger picture and that they are simply an expression
of the Earth. We are, perhaps, a mis-firing experiment that the Earth may soon
shrug off. Snyder’s deep understanding of the long, long experience of human
beings in pre-history gives him the understanding of the context of the current
mess. Perhaps he also understands, after a long life of opening people’s eyes
to the delicate beauty of the planet, that there is a limit to the influence
that one human can have. He has already done his bit and done it well. To continue
to campaign in his eighties might be something that he is not prepared to do. Time
to take stock, and think of the next move. Time to be realistic as well about the
use of aeroplanes to travel, and computers to communicate. He has used both as
tools and used them well.
The
most interesting definition of Snyder’s activities was coined rather flippantly
by Petr Kopecký. In an article he called Snyder ‘The Poet Laureate of Deep
Ecology’. The contradiction of this frequently-repeated tag is that Snyder
would point out that Deep Ecology really makes no sense because there is no
depth to it – we are part of the planet, rather than an addition to it.
Is
he a mountain man? This is probably the most constant thing in his long life.
There is a wonderful early photo of this youngsteiger, in mountain gear, Tirolean
hat, ready to go into the wilderness. Born in an era when mountains, like
African countries, existed to be conquered; Snyder has an altogether different
attitude. He was a respecter of the mountain environment, and the spiritual
significance of highland areas, long before it was fashionable. His reverence
for the north-west of the United States, and the borderlands where he was a
mountain lookout are beautiful. His choice of a mountain home is testament to
his commitment to this life.
Of
course, some of his life in the mountains has been fictionalised. In Kerouac’s
The Dharma Bums he is caricatured as Japhy Ryder. It is a charming portrait,
full of affection. However, there are inaccuracies in the account and Snyder,
over many years, has been diplomatic and classy about it. He gently reminds
enthusiastic questioners that it is a work of fiction. His criticism of the
book was rather private.
"I do wish
Jack had taken more trouble to smooth out dialogues, etc. Transitions are
rather abrupt sometimes.”
His
comment was shared with his great friend Philip Whalen, and I imagine that it
might have irked him that the comment became public.
The
person who has done best at capturing Snyder’s mountain life is John Suiter in
his beautiful book Poets on the Peaks. The spirit of cold mountain air seeps
from the pages. In many ways, it is the closest thing to a biography out there.
It’s well worth a read.
Gary
Snyder is a voice that sings out, and is there for all of us. I am delighted
that as a young man I stumbled on his writing, quite by chance. He has been a companion
for me for twenty-five years, and has shaped some of my thinking. I wish more
people were aware of him and the great example of his life. He loves our planet,
brings it into startling light on paper, and that is why he is my hero.
If
you want to find out more, an essay he wrote in 2006 is presented by the website
‘Lions Roar’. It neatly summarises his lifelong commitment to the planet.
There
is a little footnote to my interest in Gary Snyder. After many years of
wondering, I decided to try to contact him to tell him how inspired I had been
by his writing over many years. I wrote to his literary agents to ask if he would
be amenable to an e-mail. They said I could write something to him. I sent a
gushing fan-mail telling him how some of his ideas had shaped my vocation in education,
teaching Junior School children. I then forgot all about it. Several weeks
later I received a touching, warm reply.
Dear Jim,
Thanks!, xiexie,
for your kind words. 7 to 11 is a nice
age group,
smart &
verbal, visionary, not yet afflicted by doubts.
May your
affairs go well.
Gary
