His voice was deep and resonant and somehow brave, like the voice of old-time American heroes and orators. Something earnest and strong and humanly hopeful I liked about him, while the other poets were either too dainty in their aestheticism, or too hysterically cynical to hope for anything, or too abstract and indoorsy, or too political…
–Jack Kerouac, on Japhy Ryder, in The Dharma Bums
