12:2 Summer 1958

ALAN WATTS

Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen

The Summer 1958 issue of Chicago Review was mostly given to a special section, “On Zen,” comprised of contributions by Daisetz T. Suzuki, Shinichi Hisamatsu (Hoseki), Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, and Akihisa Kondo, among others. The issue included Jack Kerouac’s “Meditation in the Woods,” excerpted from his forthcoming novel, The Dharma Bums. Paul Carroll remembers how this particular editorial agenda was established:

In the summer of 1957 Irving Rosenthal offered me the job of Guest Poetry Editor on the Review. The title had been cooked up, he explained, because technically I was ineligible, having left the midway a few years before. I remember him saying he wanted “only the best poems” and to hell with literary politics or equal representation of all schools of contemporary poetry. I was delighted.

Going to talk things over with Irving in his office high in the Reynolds Club was often a revelation. One day I waltzed in to see him and discovered that the office had been swept clean of manuscripts, books, posters; in their place was a solitary peacock feather protruding straight out next to a small printed sign: “Think Zen.” I’d heard of Zen but knew nothing about it; most of the other editors were in the same boat. Before we had a chance to ask questions, Irving, all 5’1” with a beard almost as tall as he was, announced that Alan Watts was coming to the university at his invitation to give a series of lectures, “Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen.” They were terrific; and were published in the Review’s Zen issue.

Hyung Woong Pak, who translated the essay by Shinichi Hisamatsu (Hoseki) and later became editor of the Review, remembered the issue’s lingering effect: “With the publication of the Zen issue, Gary Snyder’s poems, and the sponsorship of a series of lectures by Alan Watts, people thought that Chicago Review was a guidepost for Zen Buddhism. We had many letters of inquiry and phone calls about Zen Buddhism and Zen temples.”

Watts was one of the chief popularizers of Zen during the era; we’ve included his essay, “Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen,” here.

[DN, 1996]

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