33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
paperback quality for hardcover price, October 27, 2008
This review is from: The Dharma Bums: 50th Anniversary Edition (Hardcover)
My review is not focused on the content of The Dharma Bums as much as the production of the book itself. Let it be known this is one of my favorite books of all time and I consider it Kerouac's best. My issue is with the publisher, Penguin, who has simply revamped its "Penguin Classic" edition with Ann Douglas's intro to make a Hardcover. Yes, Douglas's intro is excellent, but the only difference with this new Hardcover 50th Anniversary Edition is that is has 2 or 3 pages of a letter in which Henry Miller writes about The Dharma Bums. For me who is a bibliofile. I don't want a cheap quality cardboard book. I used to work for an Univ. Press and know about production options. Penquin basically chose the cheapest. Every single copy in 3 bookstores were banged up. You might say this isn't the publisher's fault, but it is because they didn't make a quality product that could stand even being stacked on a shelf, imagine opening it and reading it. People who want a 50th Anniversary edition want something special because it has a special meaning to them, if not buy the paperback. So I guess that's what I suggest. The Penguin Classic edition has new artwork, quality paper and the same intro, without the high price. I wish Penguin would follow Knopf's example and do beautiful books like those in their Everyman's Library Series.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Commemorative Dharma Bums, November 28, 2008
This review is from: The Dharma Bums: 50th Anniversary Edition (Hardcover)
The year 2007 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's most famous novel, "On the Road." The event received a great deal of attention with the publication of the original scroll edition of the text, a 50th anniversary commemorative edition, a compilation of five "Road Novels" by the prestigious Library of America, and several excellent books and articles about Kerouac.
The interest in Kerouac (1922-- 1969) continues.This year, 2008, has seen the publication of Kerouac's highly personal tribute to the Buddha written in 1955, "Wake up! A Life of the Buddha" together with an early novel,"The Hippos were boiled in their Tanks", written with William Burroughs. With the 50th anniversary of "The Dharma Bums" Kerouac's most popular novel after "On the Road", this new commemorative hardback edition of the text has been issued with a short letter written in 1958 by novelist Henry Miller to the publisher in praise of Kerouac's book and a previously published essay introducing the novel by Ann Douglas. The book is attractive and, here on Amazon, reasonably priced. Many paperback editions of this work are available and the Library of America's collection, which includes "The Dharma Bums" may by the best choice of all. Nevertheless, this volume is a good choice for those readers who love this book or for the lover of Kerouac on your holiday list. The remainder of this review consists of my review on Amazon, with modifications, of an earlier edition of "The Dharma Bums".
Following the success of "On the Road", Kerouac's publishers initially rejected his manuscripts such as "The Subterraneans" and "Tristessa." But his publisher asked him to write an accessible, popular novel continuing with the themes of "On the Road." Kerouac responded with "The Dharma Bums" which was published late in 1958. "The Dharma Bums" is more conventionally written that most of Kerouac's other books, with short, generally clear sentences and a story line that is optimistic on the whole. With the exception of "On the Road", "The Dharma Bums" remains Kerouac's most widely read work. I had the opportunity to reread "The Dharma Bums" and came away from the book deeply moved.
As are all of Kerouac's novels, "The Dharma Bums" is autobiographical. It is based upon Kerouac's life between 1956--1957 -- before "On the Road" appeared and made Kerouac famous. The book focuses upon the relationship between Kerouac, who in the book is called Ray Smith and his friend, the poet Gary Snyder, called Japhy Ryder, ten years Kerouac's junior. Kerouac died in 1969, while Snyder is still alive and a highly regarded poet. Allen Ginsberg (Alvah Goldbrook) and Neal Cassady (Cody Pomeray), among others, also are characters in the book. Most of the book is set in San Francisco and its environs, but there are scenes of Kerouac's restless and extensive travelling by hitchiking, walking, jumping freight trains, and taking buses, as he visits Mexico, and his mother's home in Rocky Mount, North Carolina during the course of the book.
The strength of "The Dharma Bums" lies in its scenes of spiritual seriousness and meditation. During the period described in the book, Kerouac had become greatly interested in Buddhism. He describes himself as a "bhikku" -- a Buddhist monk -- and had been celibate for a year when the book begins. It is easy to underestimate Kerouac's understanding of Buddhism. As with many authors, he was wiser in his writing that he was in his life. There is a sense of the sadness and changeable character of existence and of the value of compassion for all beings that comes through eloquently in "The Dharma Bums." Smith and Ryder have many discussions about Buddhism -- at various levels of seriousness -- during the course of the novel. Ryder tends to use Buddhism to be critical of and alienated from American society and its excessive materialism and devotion to frivolity such as television. Smith has the broader vision and sees compassion and understanding as a necessary part of the lives of everyone. Smith tends to be more meditative and quiet in his Buddhist practice -- he spends a great deal of time in the book sitting and "doing nothing" while Ryder is generally active and on the go, hiking, chopping wood, studying, or womanizing. At the end of the book, he leaves for an extended trip to Japan. (He and Kerouac would never see each other again.)
"The Dharma Bums" offers a picture of a portion of American Buddhism during the 1950s. It also offers a portrayal of what has been called the "rucksack revolution" as Smith and Ryder take to the outdoors. in In a lengthy and famous section of the book, they climb the "Matterhorn" in California's Sierra Mountains. In the final chapters of the book, Kerouac spends eight isolated weeks on Desolation Peak in the Cascades as a fire watchman. In an ending reminiscent of the ending of "On the Road", Kerouac writes:
"Now comes the sadness of coming back to cities and I'e grown two months older and there's all that humanity of bars and burlesque shows and gritty love, all upsidedown in the void, God bless them, but Japhy you and me forever we know, 'O ever youthful, O ever weeping'. Down on the lake rosy reflection of celestial vapor appeared, and I said 'God, I love you" and looked up to the sky and really meant it. 'I have fallen in love with you God. Take care of us all, one way or the other."
For all his love of Buddhism, Kerouac remained a theist. He came back from his experience on Desolation Peak, he tells the reader, yearning for human company.
Sexuality plays an important role in "The Dharma Bums", against the backdrop of what is described as the repressed 1950's, as young girls are drawn to Ryder and he willingly shares them with an initially reluctant Smith. The book includes scenes of wild parties tinged, for Smith, with sadness, in which people of both sexes dance naked, get physically involved, and drink heavily. Near the end of the book, Ryder offers Smith a prophetic warning the alcoholism which would shortly thereafter ruin Kerouac's life.
"The Dharma Bums" is a fundamentally American book and it is full of love for the places of America, for the opportunity it offers for spiritual exploration, and for its people. Kerouac's compassion was hard earned. In his introduction to a later book, "The Lonesome Traveller" he aptly described his books as involving the "preachment of universal kindness, which hysterial critics have failed to notice beneath frenetic activity of my true-story novels about the 'beat' generation. -- Am actually not 'beat' but strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic." I found a feeling of spirituality, of love of life in the face of vicissitudes, and of America in "The Dharma Bums." The work was indeed a popularization. But Kerouac's vision may ultimately have been broad.
Robin Friedman
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
kerouacwelovejack, June 16, 2009
This review is from: The Dharma Bums: 50th Anniversary Edition (Hardcover)
The best, most fun, most I want to be like Kerouac of the(admittedly) few Kerouacs I have read. This one, three times. Women deserve better in Kerouac, but hey, it's the fifties. Poor Jack fell apart in the sixties. Anyway, Bums has all the famous people thinly disguised. Gary Snyder, who is so smart he still lives and is a real Buddhist, not a fake like most of us. Ginsberg is there, Alvah Goldbook for God's sake, having sex with women. It is another road trip, back and forth across what was fast becoming the wasteland we know with pockets of natural beauty wonderfully described. You get a fairly linear narrative but the jazzy rythms intrude, the man was a frustrated musician. Maybe he should have taken more psychedelics and left the booze alone. Booze is too much of a sacrament in Bums, we know there are better things to use as sacraments. Of course, most Buddhists avoid alcohol, except some crazy Zen masters who did as they pleased, no rules please. What Jack describes in the book is still his vision of what he hoped for, but knew would not happen. It probably killed him, but the book, in a very nice yet inexpensive edition is a trip to read, and perchance to dream...
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