The Dharma Bums [Paperback]

Jack Kerouac (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 27, 1971

One of the best and most popular of Kerouac's autobiographical novels, The Dharma Bums is based on experiences the writer had during the mid-1950s while living in California, after he'd become interested in Buddhism's spiritual mode of understanding. One of the book's main characters, Japhy Ryder, is based on the real poet Gary Snyder, who was a close friend and whose interest in Buddhism influenced Kerouac.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One of the best and most popular of Kerouac's autobiographical novels, The Dharma Bums is based on experiences the writer had during the mid-1950s while living in California, after he'd become interested in Buddhism's spiritual mode of understanding. One of the book's main characters, Japhy Ryder, is based on the real poet Gary Snyder, who was a close friend and whose interest in Buddhism influenced Kerouac. This book is a must-read for any serious Kerouac fan.

Review

Autobiographical novel by Jack Kerouac, published in 1958. The story's narrator, Raymond Smith, is based on Kerouac himself, and the poet-woodsman-Buddhist, Japhy Ryder, is a thinly disguised portrait of the poet Gary Synder. The book contains a number of other characters who are drawn from actual poets and writers. The plot unfolds when Smith, who is suffering spiritual conflicts amid the emptiness of middle-class American life, meets Ryder, whom he immediately recognizes as a spiritual model. The novel tells of the growth of their friendship and Smith's groping toward personal understanding. Much of the story occurs on the American West Coast. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; Reissue edition (May 27, 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140042520
• ISBN-13: 978-0140042528
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (231 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Movements & Periods > Beat Generation

More About the Author

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922 and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969. Among his many novels are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#58 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#58 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 81 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Poor Gentle Flesh, There's No Answer. January 10, 2006

By My Uncle Stu VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"On the Road" may be considered the classic Kerouac novel, the archetype of Beatnik prose, but I would recommend "Dharma Bums" over "On the Road," as the best Kerouac read and the most important of Kerouac's works. I would even recommend "Dharma Bums" over the Kerouac Reader or other beat anthologies.

I'm always the first to admit that my perceptions of books are colored by the context of my life when I read it. I first read "Dharma Bums" when I was in college in Boulder, Colorado, I was an apathetic academic but had a budding interest in Buddhism and was sitting in for sunrise meditation with a Zen group at a Buddhist temple. I didn't own a car, rode my bike everywhere, hiked, rock climbed, and indulged in other beat-like habits. Still, I think I started all of Kerouac's books somewhere along the line, some multiple times, and "Dharma Bums" was the only one I finished.

Having just now reread it, it continues to stand apart from his other works. Kerouac's writing is always interesting to me but it is hard to move forward sometimes without a story arch. When reading Big Sur, for example, in which he writes as elegantly as possible about descending into the madness of alcohol psychosis, I find it hard to maintain my momentum.

"Dharma Bums" represents a time, a naive time in retrospect perhaps, but a fun exciting time when the beats were young, full of energy and enthusiasm, and really believed they were on to something cosmic. Over the course of this book we see Kerouac's Buddhism deepen. In fact, more than deepen, it matured and softened, evolving from austere and ascetic into something much more philosophical. More Zen, less dogmatic, not necessarily in conflict with indulgence and gratification. And things are happening in the book, there are elements of plot in the narrators travels and adventures. They climb a mountain as a spiritual practice, and, after struggling with paralyzing fear, Kerouac learns the great lesson "you can't fall off a mountain." There is the suicide of Rosie, a manic psychotic he was entrusted to baby-sit. There is various other traveling, hitchhiking, and meditating adventures, and the book wraps up with enchanting nature prose, written during solitary days as a wilderness fire lookout.

I had to check this out of the library to reread it, (see my listmania, "Books I wish weren't packed away at my in-laws"). My interest in Zen was sparked by this book initially and re-reading it drove me right back to the mat.

64 of 67 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth every penny! August 14, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Man, I don't know where to start. "The Dharma Bums" is a masterpiece of the Beat Generation and a novel I will not soon forget. After The Loser's Club by Richard Perez, this is the best book I've read all year.

Jack Kerouac wrote this story about his days as a Zen Buddhist and rucksack wanderer. His alias in the book is Raymond Smith, and he is living in Berkley with his good buddy Alvah Goldbook(Allen Ginsburg). Ray meets a Zen Lunatic named Japhy Ryder(Gary Snyder), and together they travel the mountains and pastures of Central California trying to find themselves and find the true meaning of life. Ray also journies to Desolation Peak in Washington and lives there alone for the summer, which is just another chapter to this amazing piece of literature.

Another part of this book that impressed me was the beginning, when Kerouac wrote about his experience at the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, and spoke of Alvah Goldbook's first reading of his poem "Wail", which in reality was Allen Ginsburg's legendary first reading of "Howl", which to this day is a Beat Literature classic.

While reading this book, I was constantly marking lines and passages, because some of the descriptions and poetry Kerouac included in this novel are simply amazing. "The Dharma Bums" is one of those books I will treasure forever and read over and over again.

50 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars In search of the eternal state of being August 23, 2007

By James Ferguson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

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.