Kerouac had been there before, a few years earlier, by now a literary burn-out, drunk beyond repair in the Latin Quarter, looking for a introverted, sadly elusive, “satori;” Dalley is a different man entirely, more akin to the young Jack, with a gargantuan appetite for life “burning burning burning” a respectable daily habit for cheap red wine and a taste for women in high leather boots who dont stint on the mascara.

Unlike Kerouac Dalley eschews introspection and submits to the Zen of his towering charismatic funny and compelling Master; and, so, this begins the true story this book has to tell which is one of love and surrender to a philosophy/religion/way of life which, in the Zen style, is both wonderfully and worryingly embodied in the figure of one man with all his brilliance and all his flaws.

Reading how a confused sometimes ironic young American reconciles devotion to his Master with a life lived in the bohemian Paris of the 70s; literally drunk with the beauty of the city and sceptical a more ordinary life can offer anything better, you begin to see this is basically a story of redemption.

Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs were never reedeemed or “ceritified” by anything other than their Art and their respective egos; Dalley points to a different, maybe more alluring path where the ego is gracefully passed through in pursuit of a possibly more authentic “satori.”

This is a very original book, its roots are more understandable from the perspective of the East than the West. A meeting, like Dierdrots “Jacques et son Maitre,” of learning affection and gentle irony where men meet and are changed, grace of the dharma.
Rating: 5 / 5