Word: zen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Kerouac, the author of On the Road, the Jack that journalism built into the king of the Beat Generation and the Zen terror of the transcontinental blacktop, sat passively in the passenger's seat and watched his life, reflected in the American landscape, go by like so many flaking Burma Shave signs. "I'm doomed to these universal watchfulnesses," he wrote, though not as effortlessly as Kerouac readers were once led to believe. Author Charters dispels the popular misconception that On the Road leaped spontaneously out of Kerouac's head and onto the 120-ft. roll...
...this literature new, but innovative. I'm aware of the changes, through my own children, and teaching I sense changes through what I see and read, and through personal contact. I sense a quieting mood, more reflective soul-searching. Related to this are religious activities, whether based on Zen or Jesus Christ. Young people in college are still up against the problem of what to do once they get out into the real world, and how to do it. They're thinking about how to conduct their lives in what is a difficult society, a difficult world...
OSWALD SPENGLER ONCE SAID that a sure sign of the decline of the West would be its increasing preoccupation with religiosity rather than religion. Today, with pop monstrosities like Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway, Jesus freaks on the cover of Life, and cheap return tickets to Zen Satori available only Saturday night, we seem to be substituting an elaborate facade of images and facile spiritualism for any real commitments to spiritual growth. Our culture seems to be providing more and more channels for what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace," personal fulfillment, or the illusion of it, with no trial...
...mostly young, blue-jeaned audience, but after nearly three hours, had them cheering for more. After Newman played Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor on the pedal harpsichord, he trotted onstage for a curtain call, shoulders hunched in a simian crouch, folded his hands in a Zen gesture of thanks. Grabbing his score from the harpsichord, he waved it over his head, signaled for quiet and asked, "How'd you like to hear the same piece on the organ?" When the audience roared, he clambered up to the organ and obliged. After his final scheduled piece...
...verve and intense rhythm, sprinkling musical embellishments like roman candles being tossed from an express train. This startles those who learned their Bach straight, but Newman conquers the doubters with sheer personal conviction. There is something reminiscent of Schweitzer in the way Newman's intellectual and religious philosophy, Zen, permeates his music making and mesmerizes his youthful audiences. Even on the shrill organ at Philharmonic Hall, which at top volume sounds for all the world like a herd of angry Buicks, Newman is enormously compelling...