As Kerouac aged, he reclaimed the Catholic identity he had inherited from his devout parents, although to the reader, the influence was often muffled under the Benzedrine and booze-fueled bacchanalia of his youth, especially when in the company of characters such as cowboy-Casanova Neal Cassady, a close friend of his. Toward the end of his short life, he rediscovered the Marian prayers from his childhood, when he’d been an altar boy. He even became incensed when anyone suggested that his writing didn’t reflect his devotion. He once retorted, “All I write about is Jesus” during a 1968 interview with The Paris Review’s Ted Barrigan [sic], who had asked why he never wrote about Jesus despite his observance of Christianity. He also said that On the Road, his magnum opus and a staple of modern American literature, “was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God.”
–Marlo Safi, “The Conservative, Catholic Kerouac,” 10.23.2018, National Review
