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Show Acting Alone Page 394 smack of true tragedy was that, in his final days on this planet, Kerouac had finally come around to a more or less adult level in his political thinking and had seen the Tightness of, for example, the police action in Vietnam. But it had been too late for him to disseminate such regenerate views among his depraved followers. It's not at all unreasonable to assume that Jack Kerouac could have won that war for us had he retained some of his original vigor. But his body had already been consumed by the combined synergistic poisons of alcohol and reefers and American fame. For God's sake, this Sammy character had started out no vigorous football player like Kerouac, nor an Olympic wrestler like "Garp" Irving; his body and spirit had already been halfway disintegrated even before this work with ELder Cicerone and the church had begun! He would have a mere fraction of Kerouac's shelf-life; and that would be fine with the Elder. So much the better. No need to keep the perniciousness around any longer than it takes to initiate the reaction against it. And, before the Edwine boy could be allowed to crumble all the way into total dissipation without having done any earthly good to himself or anybody else, Elder Cicerone had hastened to dredge the special little boyfriend, the diminutive would-be anthropologist, up and out of Sammy's overripe personal history, and had implanted him deliberately right under the fatman's ruined nose, right there in that special mountainside encampment which had been deliberately staffed for the occasion with specially trained missionary trainees from the mighty church. In the context of the changing values of today's youth, the missionaries presented some rather problematical questions for contemplation. Actually, it was a pity that the church.was compelled to earmark certain of its young |