Annals of Mazeppism

Jack Kerouac punned on "beat" and "attitude" and arrived at "beatitude" as the true condition of beat-ness. His biographer, Gerald Nicosia, tells us that Jack visited Morocco in 1957 (a half century ago!) where "his best time ... was a solitary hike to a Berber village in the mountains. These were the original fellaheen (the very word is Arabic) who had impressed him in the pages of Spengler with their endurance. Here in real life he was even more respectful of their simplicity and humility. In his notebook he made pencil drawings of their huts, imagining himself retired there to paint for the rest of his life. One of the peasants gave him a machete with a gold-braided handle, which he treasured ever after. Characteristically, Jack's response to Islam was based not on any intellectual apprehension but on his love for these villagers. The glory of their religion, embodied in their stolid faces, moved him to observe the fast of Ramadan. A few months later he would tell Malcolm Cowley that Islam and Buddhism were the only two religions capable of lasting another fifty years."

Nicosia, Memory Babe, London: Penguin (1983), p. 546.