Customer Reviews

The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As Kerouac notes in the introductory chapter, he met Gary Snyder, a.k.a. Japhy Ryder in 1955, just before Snyder went off to Japan to immerse himself in Zen Buddhism. What follows is a free-wheeling account of their time together in perhaps Kerouac's most appealling and certainly most postive book. Dharma Bums is a celebration of American Buddhism, which was budding in San Francisco at the time, with a number of Beat poets reading their haikus and free-verse poems at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. Once again, Kerouac revels in changing names, but among the many prominent faces presented in this autobiographical novel are Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Snyder was the rising star, a Buddhist scholar and translator of books of Japanese and Chinese poetry while studying at Berkley. Snyder, like Kerouac, had working class roots and the two hit it off from the start, exulting in each other's state of being.

Kerouac devotes Dharma Bums to Snyder in the same way he did On the Road to Neal Cassady. It was one of Kerouac's more happy times, as he was heavy into Buddhism, and sought out Snyder as a soulmate and mentor. Kerouac sets the stage wonderfully, coming across a hobo reading from St. Theresa on a train bound for LA, coming back from Mexico. He then hops the "Zipper" up to San Francisco, which whirled along at 80 miles an hour on the California coastline. Kerouac hangs out at Ginsberg's cabin in the Berkley hills, but it is Snyder's spartan cabin that draws his attention. Snyder had already chosen to live the life of an aesthete, giving up most of his worldly possessions, except for his famous rucksack and orange crates of books, mostly of poetry. Kerouac captures some wonderful moments as they all gathered around drinking wine and engaging in yab yum with a girl who went by the name of Princess.

The heart of the story revolves around Jack's and Gary's hike to the Matterhorn in the Sierra Nevada, in which the two form a strong bond that propells Kerouac on other adventures, including a summer at Desolation Peak in the northern Cascades that would become the subject of his next book, Desolation Angels. Kerouac's writing shines in this book, as he is able to maintain such an ecstatic high throughout the narrative, almost seeming to touch the sky. Of course, having such a positive person like Gary Snyder to wrap the book around gave Kerouac the impelling force he needed, as on his own Kerouac often sank into melancholy and despair, which characterized his later years. One marvels at the free and easy nature of this pair as they search out their respective enlightenment, drawing on nature and their sense of the eternal cosmos.

One doesn't have to be well versed in Buddhism to appreciate this book, although allusions and references are many and may confuse some readers. Just let yourself go and enjoy the free flow of the narrative, which is Kerouac at his best.

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. The book was critiqued by Allen Ginsberg and others close to Kerouac as a "travelogue" and as over-sentimentalized. But 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 strenght 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. I have been studying Buddhism myself for many years, and 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, and, in a lengthy and famous section of the book, 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. He comes back yearning for human company.

Sexuality plays an important role in the book, 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

...This is the book that saved me from a career in Accounting!....after reading this at 17...
I took off on my first hitch-hiking trip, adventured some (then some!), lost my virginity, got
published in the poetry rags.....and haven't looked back since!....hell, I'm still reading the damn thing
30 years later!.....like I said, THE BOOK THAT RUINED MY LIFE!.....praise the LORD!.....

If you're new to Jack Kerouac, this might be the place to start. Many people's first introduction to Kerouac is On The Road. While I love On The Road, I've read pretty much all of Kerouac's novels, and I have to say that The Dharma Bums is my favorite.

Indeed, I loved the book enough to write a companion reader for it (The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions), so right up front I have a bias and thought you should know about that.

In at least one of his letters (Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 2), Kerouac himself acknowledged that The Dharma Bums was 'really bettern ON THE ROAD' (p. 99). So, if you don't take my word for it, maybe you will take the author's and make this your first foray into beat literature. I don't think you'll regret it.

A few decades down the road from its publication, Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums seems positively prophetic. The book tells of Kerouac's adventures with his Beat-Generation bohemian cohorts in '50s America, and we can see how they and other hipsters of the time paved the way for the social and cultural revolutions of the following decades.

Originally published in 1958, the book covers events in Kerouac's life between September '55 and August '56. At the time, he had a rucksuck full of much praised yet still unpublished writings, and was soon to ride the whirlwind of fame that would be generated by the publication of On The Road. He was also trying to follow the path of Buddhism while shaking the demons of melancholy and booze, at a time when cocktails were served at business lunches and few in America had ever heard of "Zen," let alone the Dalai Lama.

There's not much to the plot: Ray Smith (standing in for Kerouac) visits his pals Japhy Ryder (poet Gary Snyder) and Alvah Goldbrook (poet Allen Ginsberg) in Berkeley, bounds up Matterhorn Peak with Ryder, explores Buddhism, attends a now-legendary San Francisco poetry reading (at the Six Gallery), and generally tries to find new kicks and follow his bliss.

As it describes Ray's wanderings, The Dharma Bums is full of optimism and melancholy, and romantic in its own unique way: Goethe meets Han Shan in the land of Eisenhower. It is one of the alcoholic writer's last stabs at breaking through his sadness, trying to step through a door into a new life. He is close to succeeding but for the wine and his unshakable brooding and impracticality. The book swings between "wild, yelling, wailing, stomping" around with lusty excited optimistic talk and "all is emptiness anyway" sighs and renunciations. Unfortunately, it is a document of a personal transformation not completed and a last happy season before the storm. In real life, Snyder took off to study in Japan and Kerouac lost his steadying influence, and fame and success would drive the already shy writer further into his bottle.

The Dharma Bums has great descriptions of places, attitudes, and people, including a marvelous portrait of the charismatic poet Snyder. The writing has a casual tone, yet is vivid and focused, and startling in its forecasting of cultural things to come. Kerouac was way ahead of his time with his evocation of Buddhism-in-action in '50s tract-home America. And he articulates the discontent of Americans unhappy with their country's prevailing zeitgeist. The character Japhy says, "You know when I was a little kid in Oregon I didn't feel that I was an American at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper gray censorship of all our real human values."

We feel the groundswell of the coming decade: of hippies, sexual liberation, the environmental movement, the Green Party, and college students backpacking through Europe or their own mountains. Japhy adds, "I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution, thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to the mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, young girls happy and old girls happier....Ray, by God, later on in our future life we can have a fine free-wheeling tribe in these California hills, get girls and have dozens of radiant enlightened brats, live like Indians in hogans and eat berries and buds...East'll meet West anyway."

It worked out that way for Gary Snyder (who went off to live in the Sierra Nevada foothills and has had a long career as an accomplished poet, naturalist and professor). It wasn't the path for Kerouac after all, yet his visions, wanderings and electric prose in The Dharma Bums, On The Road and other books have inspired millions of readers all over the world.

Just before "On the Road" brought him the success he craved, Kerouac wrote this account of the "Zen Lunatics" and Gary Snyder's prediction of a "rucksack revolution." This is my first Beat book; in middle age I admit lingering distrust of their sometimes condescending attitude towards the rest of us.

That being said, this novelization may make the young feel vigorous and the mature wistful. Hearing "Japhy Ryder" gush about bulgar and yabyum, green tea and trail mix, baked bread and paisley shawls, Goodwill and hi-fi jazz before the massive commodification of counterculture filters the innocence of these early free spirits from Eisenhower's decade into a muted sepia. It's instructive, as Ann Douglas notes in her introduction, that "Ray" as Kerouac strives towards a greater sympathy than Snyder-as-Japhy expresses with the "straights" who must, after all, fund the hikes and the naps of the Beats. There's a sense of slumming, by these two students wanting to imitate a "bhikku," a dharma bum. Japhy in real life's Reed-Indiana-Berkeley, Ray's author a scholarship-dropout from Columbia, allied with other privileged folks from the Ivy League and NYC bohemia. I don't know why, but there's an aura of play-acting and noblesse-oblige irritating me about their admirable but somehow smug quest. Blame it on Berkeley?

Ray appears, to his eternal credit, aware at least of the contradiction between a Zen lunatic lording his insight over the unenlightened crew-cut and bee-hived masses and his own self struggling, who down on his luck has to go back to North Carolina to live off his kinfolk. Some of the best moments in this book come when Ray tells of his tramps by train and hitchhiking.

Apropos, this book was written in ten days and nights at his mother's place in Florida. As his fictional self, Ray ponders the contradiction between the San Francisco party scene of dissolute intellectuals and his family, unable to comprehend Ray's notions and his lazy habits. "And I thought of Japhy as I stood there in the cold yard looking at {his mother as she does the dishes]: 'Why is he so mad about white tiled sinks and "kitchen machinery" he calls it? People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism." (100)

Yet, the Beats' stance against conformity did inspire generations towards more righteous behavior, along with a lot of excess on that road to wisdom. It's noteworthy that the narrator opens by admitting that while he was once more devout before he met Ryder, now he's "a little tired and cynical." (2) Ray seems already to have studied the dharma largely on his own and passed through the initial, somewhat superior stage, and now feels it's a lot of "lip service." Still, meeting Japhy, Ray perks up.

The centerpiece of the narrative, the climb of the Matterhorn, makes one compare that Sierra peak to the manufactured scale mold towering in smaller form above the then-new Disneyland further south in California. The impression of a still largely rural state, even around the Bay Area, leaves a sense of loss for those who live in the state now. The Beats and then hippies, no less than Cold War defense industries, transformed California into a busier, tawdrier, and uglier place, with dreamers and schemers lured by the rhapsodies in Kerouac and Snyder and their mates.

Unable to stay in the South with his family, inarticulate in sharing with them his understanding of Buddhist dharma, Ray goes back after bumming it along the Mexican border just as he left, back west to work as a Cascadia fire-warden at Desolation Peak's lookout. There, as the story ends, he finds his expected peace. "I made raspberry Jello the color of rubies in the setting sun." (183) The interim return to California, full of parties in Marin, as with the previous woozy bashes in San Francisco, does drag the momentum down for long stretches of this short book. The contrasts between boho decadence and natural purity may be intentional, but the wobbly, hungover funk does hobble the pace. The comparisons between energy and dissipation do, on the other hand, underscore the lesson of impermanence, even of happy times, and the necessity for self-discipline.

Japhy reminds Ray of the change coming when more people join their refusal to conform. "East'll meet West anyway. Think what a great world revolution will take place when East meets West finally, and it'll be guys like us that can start the thing. Think of millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country and hitchhiking and bringing the word down to everybody." (155)

Kerouac here's still young enough-- even if nearly a decade past Snyder-- to hope. "Something will come of it in the Milky Way of eternity stretching in front of all our phantom misunderstandings, friends. I felt like telling Japhy everything I thought but I knew it didn't matter and moreover he knew it anyway and silence is the golden mountain." (53) This typical passage captures the tone of the novel-as-memoir. Based as Douglas notes on smart predecessors like Thomas Wolfe, Melville, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, and Céline, Kerouac sought an admirable purity in his style. It may be difficult for us half-a-century later, jaded, to hear its freshness, but its sincerity lingers in moments such as when he tells us of the moon on water as they descended the mountain on a dark night. "Everything up there had smelled of ice and snow and heartless spine rock. Here there was the smell of sun-heated wood, sunny dust resting in the moonlight, lake mud, flowers, straw, all those good things of the earth." (68-69) This may not be the more manic Kerouac that made him famous, but it may give today's uneasy riders a more lasting lesson in the legacy he left us.

(P.S. Also see my review of "Wake Up! A Life of the Buddha," written by Kerouac in 1955, published in 2008.)

First, let me say that I have read Dharma Bums several times and, of course, found something new and wonderful in each reading. It is, quite simply, a classic American novel, and I feel that the previous two reviews (five stars, naturally) sum up the book's contents, its spiritual impulse, and finally, its dramatic impact on American letters better than I could here.

What I would like to add, then, is that THIS SPECIFIC EDITION (the Penguin Classics Deluxe) is, by far and away, the best out there. In my mind, it is a collector's item, a kind of retro masterwork, and featuring the outstanding if not enigmatic illustrations by the artist known simply as Jason. To be sure: the drawing of Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder) sitting by the fire high in the mountains, immersed in the moment, is simply a gem.

Finally, if you find this book to your liking, I think you should march right out (metaphorically speaking, I guess, since we are all on-line) and purchase John Suiter's stunning Poets on the Peaks, which is a large, well-designed photo and bio work about Snyder, Kerouac, Philip Whalen and their time spent as fire look outs on Desolation Peak - trust me, the photos in this coffee table book are utterly fascinating.

Liked this more than On the Road. Has a completely different feel. One of my favorite reads.

Kerouac may be best known for On The Road, but this is by far my favorite of his books. Looking back, it has probably been the most influential book on my life. The story is just so honest and original and beautiful, it confirmed my desire to be a writer when I read it as a sophomore in high school. But not just a writer. It made me want to live my life without shackles, free like Kerouac's character Japhy (Gary Snyder), climbing mountains and writing poetry. It captures the Boho 50's era like no other, especially in the Bay Area. Finally, it inspired me to learn more about Buddhism and eventually spend a year in a Buddhist monastery. I've never met someone who has read The Dharma Bums and hasn't loved it. It's one of the best books of the 20th century.

By Jaimal Yogis, author of Saltwater Buddha

Jack Kerouac is one of those artists, musicians, or writers who I get really into for a while, then don't occupy my time with their works, but always come back to them at some point. I read On the Road around 6-7 years ago and afterward quickly read Big Sur and Visions of Girard. Over the past few years though, I thought maybe I had grown out of him. So when my Dad recently gave me a City Lights gift certificate for Christmas, I made a mental note that I'd like to see if I still liked Jack Kerouac or not. I found a neat copy of The Dharma Bums that I had never seen before, so I grabbed it.

Dharma Bums is my favorite Kerouac book so far. As with On the Road, I found his writing to be very evocative; scenery, places, but especially the people Jack comes across in his adventures really come to life. As with his other works, Kerouac calls refers to himself by another name, and in The Dharma Bums he is known as Ray Snyder. The other protagonist is Zen poet Gary Snyder, or Japhy Ryder as he is known here. Dharma Bums starts off "Ray" and "Japhy" and friends hanging out in the Bay Area, and recounts the now-legendary night Allen Ginsburg first recited "Howl" during the heyday of the "San Francisco Renaissance." He also briefly goes over an odd sort of orgy at Japhy's Berkeley house, where all Ray felt comfortable doing was licking some girl's elbows and arms. I have to admit I had just come home from a happy hour when I read the first 30 pages, so that part is kind of fuzzy in my memory.

Following this, the book recalls their trip up the Matterhorn, a large mountain in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range. This was the highlight of the book for me. I felt like I was right there with Ray, Japhy, and their friend Morley who forgot to bring a sleeping bag for the freezing trek, but insisted on bringing an air mattress for him to sleep on. One thing about Kerouac's book is that you can really tell he loves the company of his friends and people he meets on the road. I can't ever recall reading a bad thing about anyone in any of his books. I think a large part of the reason I like reading his books so much is that I appreciate his sincere joy he finds from people and nature. Others might call it naïveté, but bullocks to them.

Following the Matterhorn expedition, Ray leaves to visit his Mom in North Carolina. He hops trains, takes the bus, and hitchhikes across the country. There's the guy from Ohio he meets near the Mexican border, and the fun they have when they make an excursion across the border. In North Carolina one gets the sense that Ray isn't appreciated by his family that much. He tries to explain Buddhism and they laugh him off. I couldn't help but feel bad for him. His mom seems nice, but she is never really developed that well.
Every day he went into the woods to meditate and cavort with the animals. I think that's probably what I would be doing too.

After his return to CA, he is about to take a summer job as a fire lookout in Washington State's Desolation Peak, on Japhy's recommendation. Likewise, Japhy is about to head to Japan to live at a Buddhist monastery. Being Ray and Japhy however, you know there has to be some serious partying before they leave. They are staying in Corte Madera, and there are wild parties every night, usually involving copious amounts of alcohol and people dancing naked. Japhy and Ray sneak out a few days before Japhy is scheduled to leave, and go on a final trek through Marin County wilderness. Japhy leaves and everyone is sad.

The final part of TDB is Ray making his way up to Washington. The strangers he meets are usually nice, with the exception of the Oregon cowboy who purposely runs over Ray's hat on the road. He briefly covers his time as a fire lookout, but I'm sure Desolation Angels goes into much more detail. That will be the next Kerouac book I read. There are a lot of Buddhist themes, prayers, and sayings throughout the book (hence the title.) While that might turn some readers off, I enjoyed it. Buddhism is something that has interested me for quite some time. It's sad that Jack didn't find what he was looking for. The bottle turned out to be his salvation - and demise.