World Famous Comics: The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
By: Jack Kerouac Publisher: Penguin Classics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Penguin Classics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 224 Publication Date: October 31, 2006
Product Description: The Dharma Bums was published one year after On the Road made Jack Kerouac a celebrity and a spokesperson for the Beat Generation. Sparked by his contagious zest for life, the novel relates the adventures of an ebullient group of Beatnik seekers in a freewheeling exploration of Buddhism and the search for Truth.
Inspirational Journey Jack Kerouac was considered something of a revolutionary of his time, though whether or not he fits that bill in each person's mind is entirely a personal decision tied closely to their belief system and the flexibility of their description of the term.
Reading Dharma Bums can be something of an inspirational journey for any free-spirited souls who enjoy dreaming of climbing a mountain or just cutting loose and doing whatever their degenerative mind feels like doing at that moment.
With characters who drink tea and openly share their intimacies with one another, whose dark as well as hopeful and intellectual sides, not to mention immature and once naive sides being depicted quite visually to the reader, there is reason to be impressed with Mr. Kerouac's work.
I would recommend this book to anyone with an open mind and an appreciation for fresh experiences, as well as an ability to discern the difference between enjoying a uniquely written piece of literature from the choosing of one's own moral behaviors in daily life.
Perhaps it is not a book for developing minor minds, but it ought to be enjoyable for the well-read adult.
Kerouac's Lyrical and Prophetic Musings 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 At the time, he had a rucksuck full of much praised yet still unpublished writings, and was soon to ride the whirlwind of fame that would be generated by the publication of On The Road.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.
This edition of an American classic is the best out there! 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.
Shallow I found Dharma Bums suprising. I thought On the Road was one of the most rambling, self-indulgent books that I've ever read, but I realized that Dharma Bums is even more so. The book reminded me how the degeneration of American intellectual life began with the Beats who, at least when they were in the '50's, were self-rightous and shallow, not to mention drunk womanizers, an odd trait for devout Buddhists. This book is a cultural artifact from the Beat era, but not a book to add to one's must-read list. Life is short. Read better.
In search of the eternal state of being 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.
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