The rebellion of Jack Kerouac and Donald Barthelme against the multinationals AmericaOh America, home of red, white, blue and green. Green like our greenest grass. Green like our ancestor George on a dollar bill. You too can climb the market economy mountain to your little green house. Climb the corporate mountain to provide for your wife in her little green dress. With green under your feet, reach for gold in the sky. Oh America, this mountain is rich. As many Americans enthusiastically began and continued their climb toward the financial stability promised by the 1960s, a counterculture emerged of writers and thinkers seeking to climb their own mountains, to tell their own story of the climb as they understood it. For Jack Kerouac, the story was The Dharma Bums, where a man discovers himself in minimalist, Buddha-like grace in the mountains. Donald Barthelme borrows the mountain of materialism of the American market economy and attempts to recover it in his prose poem, "The Glass Mountain." Through their respective mountain narratives, Kerouac and Barthelme fight a personal battle against the raging currents of corporate America. Jack Kerouac's mountain in The Dharma Bums comes to represent what Kerouac, or rather the main character Ray Smith, conceives of as the ideal standard of living. While climbing the Matterhorn with Japhy Ryder, Ray looks at Japhy with a particularly eye-opening realization,[W]hat matters to him if he has no money: he doesn't need money, all he needs is his backpack with those little bags of plastic bags full of dry food and a good pair of shoes and off you go enjoying the privileges of a millionaire in an environment like this. (Kerouac 77) Ray then decides to beg...... middle of paper ...... stories, Jack Kerouac and Donald Barthelme both participate in a personal rebellion against corporate America through their writing. Today it is difficult to determine what influence their rebellion had on American corporations. We can be certain, however, that their resistance to corporate America has led them to a greater understanding of themselves and their surroundings. Not only do Kerouac and Barthelme provide an illuminating look at the transformation of corporate America in the twelve years since their writings were published, they also allow us a unique look at the American mountains through their eyes. Works Cited Barthelme, Donald. "The Glass Mountain." Take it to the street. Ed. Alessandro Bloom. Wini Breines. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Kerouac, Jack. Dharma wanderers. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1976.