The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Great book for a hike or for a metaphysical hike. I can't get over how cool it is to read about how others experience the outdoors and the fact that these guys use the simplicity of haiku fits so well.

Very enjoyable read. My first thoughts when beginning this book is that the main characters are about as pretentious as characters can be. However, upon further reading I came to find that they were deeper than I had perceived. These characters are very earnest souls simply living life in the era and scene they found best suited them. This novel has no great conflict, no great struggle, no insurmountable task. It reminded me a lot of Bukowski novels in the sense that there was no good or evil. Nor, were there heroes or villains. This is, simply put, the chronicles of a small group of people in a short period of time in their lives. But, it is executed in a way that the reader is left curious and entertained throughout the course of the book.

Like so many others out there, I love Jack Kerouac, though Dharma Bums isn't my favorite book by Kerouac. Even so, it's definitely worth reading. What I wanted to comment on is this particular edition, which is a nice hardcover (an anniversary edition) with nice-sized print for reading; all in all, a very nice book, worth the price. Dharma Bums is an exhilarating, inspiring, beautiful book. God bless Jack. He had a great heart.

Interesting insight into how Buddhism and mountain hiking became fashionable and what the "Beat Generation" had to do with it and how
shallow these people could be despite the brilliant poetry they wrote.
Written in his well known own voice, seasoned with a bit of sadness and desperation. The gender stereotyping is not excessive for the period, but depressing by current standards.
It might be a good book to give to Hipsters close to you if you want to motivate them to venture beyond the local park ;-)

This was a must read during my solo hiking trips. A exploration into the minds of two Dharma Bums with different takes on their Buddhism lifestyles. Really enjoyed getting into their minds and following the main character, Ray, develop into his own being, confident in his thoughts and place in the world. Great strong ending.
Definitely recommend it.

Classic Kerouac, recommended for 15-24 year olds. Prob would have rated it higher if I were a decade or two younger (I'm 37). His philosophy is a tad sophomoric/ idealistic, so I found myself rolling my eyes, having lots of, "no duh" moments, or just wanting to skip over paragraphs, simply because I've outgrown or surpassed lots of his existential, Eastern-based "revelations." I loved most of his meditations on hiking and nature (since nature is my church), though lots of the socializing scenes and bum-superiority rants were super corny.
Kerouac was a gifted poet, and 50 years ago his work was quite a radical. In that context, this book is important.

jack kerouac came recommended by several presumably legitimate sources however, after reading the dharma bums i may have to think twice the next time these people offer up others. while i myself am an avid hiker and can relate to the sections in this book dealing with such senarios the book as a whole seemed to drag. there were some scenes which had much potential to be captivating such as when a friend's girlfriend committs suicide, but kerouac fails to really emphasize. overall i rate this book 3 stars because of the subject/genre of book that it is but i have read much better authors. not impressed.

His work was probably good & interesting in context, but it has not stood the test of time. It's primary point of interest is the linguistic freedom, but since the advent of hip-hop & pop-literature, it's not super impressive. Pass.

Dharma rascals

'One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple'
Jack Kerouac
The Dharma Bums (1958)

In my careful first steps on the Zen path, I am not very picky, with every teacher and in every zendo or monastery I pick something up, a picture a word a sentence. Sometimes just like when I hear a politician speaking, ... on the one hand on the other hand ... there is something in there ... and the next politician I think the same. At the Longquan Temple in Utrecht, the meditation was recently led by Chan master Ton Lathouwers. He effortlessly connected the highest Chan or Zen ideals with his own daily struggle. Actually, this was the first time that a teacher really touched me. The conversation afterwards was also personal and heart to heart. When something is to be transferred, perhaps the only way, directly between master and student and in the silence of our meditation.

The accumulating misunderstandings between Eastern words and Western ears are innumerable.
Let me start with Jack Kerouac, the father of the beatniks, who discovered Buddhism in the early fifties. Among others via the book Walden by Henry Thoreau. Kerouac learned to meditate and wrote two books about Buddhism, which his publishers were not interested in. Kerouac would later join a group of poets, students and philosophers who studied the source texts, something that Kerouac himself could not. One of them would become the protagonist (Japhy) of his second novel The Dharma Bums. In the novel Japhy gets a vision of young people who wander around the world aimlessly, to find themselves or to live as a 'Zen Lunatic'. A prophetic vision.

The established science did not get much on with Kerouac's Buddhism, but for many fresh young baby boomers it was a first acquaintance. Ginsberg started meditating through Kerouac. Bob Dylan gets interested through Ginsberg. Through Dylan, oriental thoughts came to The Beatles. Who had previously changed their name from Beetles to the Beatles as an ode to Kerouac. Through "Within you without you" the Eastern wisdom flowed into my teenage attic room. 'And to see you're really only very small and life flows on within you and without you'

'Within you without you' is the only number on Sgt. Pepper written by George Harrison. He composed the piece after he studied and meditated in India for six weeks in 1966 with his mentor, Ravi Shankar. It contains many ideas from Hindu philosophy and teachings of the Vedas encapsulated in the exploration of spiritual themes that had become popular in the Summer of Love. Musically it relies heavily on the often much longer compositions by Ravi Shankar himself.

Fifty years later I continue my wanderings, sometimes in zendo's and monasteries, more often through poetry or art, always in the silence of my meditation.

Me, my pipe,
my folded legs -
Far from Buddha

Jack Kerouac
Dharma Pops (1956)

My sweet gentle lonesome traveler Ti Jean. This is supposedly the book that sold millions of back packs. For me, it was Jack's one of many journeys. And I enjoyed it as such. Sadly, by the time word "got out" on Jack, people felt it was their right to visit him, camp out in his yard, buy him booze, rip him off and harass him and his mom.
This book has nothing to do with "hippies". It's one man's journey to find where he fit in the greater scheme of things. By '59, he told Ginsberg he was lost and wanted to live in Gary (Japhy) Snyder's world again, as fame & booze were destroying him.
Bless you, Jack, alive in every dreamer's heart.
PS. I found the Intro by Ann Douglas (in this edition) to be an over-intrusive, over-intellectualized spin on a pretty simple book. Jack hated these kind of people. Skip it or read the book first.

Not as advertised. These copies are remaindered and are marked on the bottom as such with a felt-tip line. I had purchased this as a gift but was unable to give it due to the remaindered marking. The online information about these books fail to mention their remaindered status.

This is only the second Kerouac book I have read, the first being On the Road, but it seems to me like Kerouac was essentially writing the same book with variation over and over again. I do not mean that to be a criticism at all. I think all good writers (and philosophers) essentially write the same book over and over (F. Scott Fitzgerald had a quote about this that I am too lazy to look up). That is what life is like as well. We constantly engage in the same search, over and over, and we may gain a little wisdom each time through, but ultimately we just have to begin again. Kerouac, who is Ray Smith in this book, definitely seems to have gained some wisdom between On the Road and this book. Ray still finds himself clinging to charismatic figures who he thinks represent salvation or enlightenment or escape but he has traded Dean, a high-energy petty criminal, for Japhy, a backwoods Zen enthusiast, or Dharma Bum. Ray follows Japhy up a mountain, then to his shack, and then spends a summer up on Desolation Peak as a look out.

Like On the Road there is not really much of a traditional plot in this novel. Kerouac was not writing a traditional novel with this book. Kerouac's books are about seekers and the lives of seekers. At one point Ray says to Japhy "I ain't gonna rest till I find out why, Japhy, why" (201) The why Ray wants an answer to is "why is so mean, this Eternal Scene, just what's the point, of this whole joint?" (105). Kerouac's novels are about people who are pursuing the "why" and they are structured like the search: confusion and sadness, an insight, return to confusion and sadness, repeat. Kerouac was too good an artist, and too honest of a human being, to produce a work where there is some big final insight that finally answers the "why" question. Ray has moments where he feels like all is revealed. Late in the book on Desolation Peak Ray has such a moment of realization, "'Poor gentle flesh,' I realized, 'there is no answer.' I didn't know anything anymore, I didn't care, and it didn't matter, and suddenly I felt really free" (240). But, of course, that is not the end, and Ray eventually has to come down from Desolation Peak, back "down the trail back to this world" to begin all over again (244).

There is a fair amount about Buddhism in this book and some readers have been critical of Kerouac's understanding of Buddhism and Zen but I think they are missing the point. It is easy to see other people's errors, especially since the modern Zen enthusiast has way more access to Zen literature than Kerouac would have had, but people forget that life is just one big error after another (one continuous mistake). We must have the courage to pursue our errors because it is only by pursuing our errors to the point of dead ends that we ever learn. If we just sit at home and rest in our feeling of being right forever we will never get anywhere. Life is about living our errors honestly until we eventually come to see for ourselves that they are errors. Ray should not, in other words, be trying to get everything right about Zen right at the beginning, he should just live his errors honestly and sincerely, as he does. Ray, in this book, has just recently been introduced to the Dharma, and he is excited about it, as people tend to be when they think they have discovered something new. With maturity (and if Kerouac had not died prematurely as a result of his alcoholism) his errors in understanding would have been corrected by life itself. I do not think anyone would question Kerouac's sincerity and that is what really matters. If you are sincere and honest you will eventually discover your errors. Errors are not really that important anyways. If salvation depended on having exactly the right opinions about everything it would be cause for universal despair.

There are a few moments where I think Ray manages to get to the heart of Buddhism. At one point in the book Ray wonders why Japhy "is so mad about white tiled sinks and 'kitchen machinery' as he calls it? People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums. Compassion is the heart of Buddhism" (132) In another place Ray is back at home, he has been spending his nights meditating, and having all sorts of very intellectual sounding insights into the emptiness of all things, but, at one point, he says "There were now early spring mornings with the happy dogs, me forgetting the Path of Buddhism and just being glad" (141). I think Ray comes closer to the essence of Buddhism in such moments than he does when he is intellectualizing about the emptiness of all things. It is true that this is not really a very good book to learn Zen from, for that I would recommend picking up a book by D.T. Suzuki, but it is a great book for anyone interested in exploring the human condition.

The one thing that I do not like about Kerouac is that his search is surprisingly extroverted. His narrators always seek salvation in some external figure or a new way of life or visions of emptiness. His characters never spend a lot of time exploring the dirt beneath their feet. Ultimately, I think Kerouac himself was undone, despite his best intentions, by his own psychological and emotional problems, that he never seemed really capable of facing directly (and I should be upfront and say I know almost nothing about his life; it is merely a sense I get from reading his books). This may be partly a matter of personal preference but I tend to prefer authors who explore the psyches of their characters, who try to dive into the unconscious, and unravel their emotional problems. It is, of course, possible to go too far in either extreme. One can certainly pursue introspection too far but Kerouac's characters seem to me to be almost totally lacking in introspection. Ray never stops to wonder, for example, why he has to drink all the time, even though Japhy makes an issue out of it. He just says that "wine is holy" and imagines that he is pursuing some kind of divine Dionysian life.

Still, Kerouac is very honest about his emotional reactions. He does not get lost in blind optimism. There is a passage late in the book that I love when Ray is on Desolation Peak and "Mad raging sunsets poured in seafoams of cloud through unimaginable crags, with every rose tint of hope beyond, I felt just like it, brilliant and bleak beyond words. Everywhere awful ice fields and snow straws; one blade of grass jiggling in the winds of infinity, anchored to a rock" (240). It is these lyrical descriptions of the human condition in its search for wisdom that I think are the main reason people keep coming back to Kerouac, despite the fact that his novels lack traditional plots, and despite the fact that authorities on Zen have often claimed he totally misunderstood Zen. I think the authorities on Zen have forgotten that not every book written is meant to be a treatise on Zen. This surely isn't, but it is a beautiful novel that manages to express, in often heartbreakingly lyrical prose, the joy and sadness of being human.

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.

1) Plot (2 stars) - An urban East Coaster experiments with Californian Buddhism in rural and city backgrounds. And that's about it. The main character doesn't really have a goal or destination, except perhaps to go more and more rural. Perhaps this wandering is the point of the book. But, in terms of plot, it did not make me want to turn pages.

2) Characters (3 stars) - Ray Smith (Kerouac), Japhy Ryder (Snyder), and others are beautiful exotic and eccentric characters, but there seemed to be little inner tension on display. Who are they trying to become? What are their difficulties? Being a wondering Zen rucksacker in the 50's probably wasn't very easy from a societal relationship perspective, but that ripe tension unfortunately was missing from the story.

3) Theme (3 stars) - I had a hard time pulling out the message of this book. What was Kerouac trying to say about the world? That finding meaning is difficult? That truths are fleeting? That ethical systems are relative? That modern civilization is silly? There are seeds of all these here, but for me they didn't flower into a cohesive message.

4) Voice (3 stars) - On the whole, I enjoyed the writing. Although the jumping of focus from inconsequential details to "meaning of life" observations, seemingly from paragraph to paragraph, gave the feeling of being un-edited and rambling. But again, maybe this range of focus is the point (i.e., every detail in life if equally important).

5) Setting (4 stars) - Kerouac does capture a time and place well, and offers us a nice window into what it was like to live with the Beats in San Francisco in the 1950s.

6) Overall (3 stars) - I appreciate the cultural significance of the book, and the movement it started, and for that I'm glad I read it, but as a stand alone story I found it hard to get through on several occasions.

Published in 1958, this book is a fascinating preview of the 1960's. Like On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) it is based on Kerouac's adventures in the late 1940's and early 1950's as he and his buddies helped create the counter-culture, migrating cross-country between bases in Greenwich Village and San Francisco. They hop freights as hobos (the end of that era). They talk endlessly about Buddhist concepts (thus Dharma). Kerouac is credited with inventing the phrase "beat generation" but his group disowned it when the press turned it into the pejorative "beatnik," precursor of flower children and hippies. So, Jack and his buddies hang out in San Francisco, partying and backpacking. A good part of the book is an excellent stand-alone backpacking story. You can always spot Jack at the party: he's the guy chugging from jug of cheap wine, a precursor to his death from alcoholism in 1967. This is a great story but there is an annoying "Oh gosh! Golly gee" aspect to the writing as if Jack were the world's biggest Eagle Scout, gone bad with the booze and the girls.

To me it's fascinating to see this work as a precursor to the cultural revolution of the 1960's. Here in the late 1940's and early 1950's we have: haiku; Zen vs. materialism; criticism of suburban TV zombie families; revolt against the suburban lifestyle; hot tubs; love of nature and backpacking: buying your clothes at Goodwill; yogurt; free love; taking all your clothes off at parties (still hasn't quite caught on); cooking with mesquite; hibachis (remember those?), and, of course, jeans and guitars. Hard drugs weren't in yet, at least in Kerouac's crowd.

After Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" exploded upon the minds of the nineteen fifties youth, the spontaneous, wandering philosophy, combined with jazz and drug induced visions became the bel esprit, the beau ideal, the pulsating throb that beckoned, wandererlust with the sole goal, a blissful, beatific way of life.
The paganism of San Francisco's Bohemia enticed with siren voice, many away from homes, touting marathon drinking bouts, free love, drug experimentation, and wild poetry jam sessions. All believed they were, "on the road to Heaven."
Japhy Ryder aka Gary Snyder, was the number one Dharma Bum, a spiritual model. Ryder and Smith were eager to climb the Matterhorn, enjoy a Happiness Conference deep in the Sierra wilderness, or learn about yalyum from a naked woman, a Bodhisattva, who desired to be a holy concubine in a ritual cave. They wanted true,sweet sleep, meditation, and intense silence.
The trail had an immortal look, the lake below, a toy, the fallen snag made a perfect bridge. The ferry and a cold drizzle displayed Puget Sound,the Northwest,
Mount Baker, and the Port of Seattle. The Hotel Stevens had a clean skid row room for a dollar seventy five. First Avenue had a Goodwill Store, wool socks, and bandanas. Smith was headed for a week at Fire School. He'd hike the Skagit River in a wonderland of emptiness of the golden eternity. Alone on Desolation Peak, he found the Great Truth Cloud, Dharmamega, the ultimate goal.
Kerouac sought inner peace. Not so much to explain the way of the world, nor to understand it, but to accept life as it came, and to appreciate the raindrop in the illimitable ocean which is awakenerhood. Another James Joyce, creating new words to accept, or not. The Dharma Bums has a swing, a feeling for nature, and enough self-doubting for all readers. It had been ten years since I bought and read Kerouac. Rediscovery hides around every corner.

The Dharma Bums was published in 1958, a year after Kerouac's more famous novel, On the Road. I read them both in the 1960's and remember his free-flowing writing style and his general enthusiasm but with On the Road I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. It may have been a seminal work but being original doesn't necessarily mean it is engaging. Lacking confidence, I assumed it was my fault. I read it again in the mid 1980's and, with confidence, understood less "what all the fuss was about." I recalled that I had liked The Dharma Bums better--way back then--but I couldn't remember why. So after forty some years, I revisited it.

The Dharma Bums is less about the Beat generation (as in On the Road) and more about a couple young men, Ray and Japhy, in search of Truth through Zen Buddhism. This was based on the real-life Kerouac and pal poet Gary Snyder, who apparently had a large influence on Kerouac's Buddhist journey. There is a lot more praying, meditation, and celibacy going on here than wild living, although Ray did like his port wine. I found Kerouac's zest for life innocent and life affirming, his striving for understanding of the world similar to other men's striving. He was thirty-six at the time but he sounded younger and wiser.

The essence of the book is told in one paragraph, well into the book: "[S]ee the whole thing is a world of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of `em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures...." One might accuse Kerouac of being a prophet back in 1958; or lacking a divine source, at least a soothsayer, predicting the Hippy movement and "flower children."

I enjoyed the great hike into the Sierras, the descriptions of Marin County, the name dropping of locations--North Beach, Oakland and Berkeley--the trips for skid row coffee, shopping at Goodwill and the Salvation Army, hopping trains, hitchhiking home to North Carolina for Christmas, living lean in comfortable shacks, and the summer of self-discovery on fire watch at Desolation Peak in Washington. I particularly liked reading the bit about the cheap bus ride from smoggy LA to Riverside, with its fresh clean air! "I was exulted to see a beautiful dry river bottom with white sand and just a trickle river in the middle as we rolled over the bridge into Riverside." He camped among the thickets, "a kind of bamboo," on the river bottom in a nice open spot "except for the roar of trucks on the river bridge." In the 1960's, this had no meaning to me. But I now know the bridge because I lived in Riverside, CA for twenty-five years. It's on Mission Inn Blvd. and it's the same place where the homeless camp today.

Kerouac floats between sadness, "Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?"--to moments of humorous joy--"But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious."

I now know why I liked this book all those years ago. I read it at a time when being a hobo was an option, when riding a freight train was a considered choice, when the song lyric "I've got plenty of nothin and nothin's plenty for me," from Porgy and Bess, held an attraction. I had a romanticized notion that happiness was to be found in a vow of poverty and adventurous exploration, mixing my Jack London, Hemmingway and Robert Rurak with the Beat writers. My "Desolation Peak" experience was in 1963, a summer at 9000 feet, in Fish Lake Utah, spending my nights in my sleeping bag on a cot in a rustic old lodge, my days doing the work of common men, my free time fishing, exploring, messing with the Mormon girls, and killing jackrabbits. At the end of the summer, I hitchhiked to LA with a change of underwear plus four cans of Coors beer rolled up in my sleeping bag then hitched all the back to Ohio arriving two days before the beginning of my senior year in college. It was the most difficult semester of my prosaic college life. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to climb mountains, sail the oceans, see the world, witness nature at its wildest, experience the freedom of unlimited options. A sense of responsibility and a cute cheerleader helped me change my mind--the cheerleader more than the sense of responsibility. (I had also concluded that I liked girls who shaved their legs and smelled good. One might suggest that this was a sign of intelligence. I know it had nothing to do with intelligence).

Accusing Kerouac of naivety would be a valid criticism of his thinking. The world wasn't (and isn't) ready to "wake up" as he suggests, but I admire his optimism: "You and I ain't out to bust anybody's skull, or cut someone's throat in an economic way, we've dedicated ourselves to prayer for all sentient beings and when we're strong enough we'll really be able to do it, too, like the old saints. Who knows, the world might wake up and burst out into a beautiful flower of Dharma everywhere." I recently read a definition of the pursuit of happiness from Charles Colson. (What? You've got to be kidding! Chuck Colson and Jack Kerouac in the same paragraph?) Colson said it was "the freedom to make our best efforts toward a virtuous life." Kerouac may have been misguided, self-destructive and a sleazeball of the highest order--I don't really know--but in this book, he sounded like an eager man in the pursuit of happiness. His final plea at the end of the book is poignant: "God, I love you...Take care of us all, one way or the other."

As with On the Road, Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums in a white heat, typing it on a roll of paper so that he wouldn't have to stop when he came to the end of a page. He called his method "spontaneous prose" - a beauteous mix of troubadour poetics, lapsed Catholicism, jazz, highways, and freight trains. Other writers, Truman Capote among them, thought that it was more stream than consciousness. "He is not a writer," Capote opined, "he's a typewriter."

For a generation of young people disaffected by the materialism of the 1950s, Kerouac's style of prose dovetailed perfectly with the rhythms of truck-stop diners, roadside vistas, and bottles of wine. His road novels were a call to adventure and thousands followed him to Denver, to New York City, to California, to Mexico and back with a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, and a few books of poetry and philosophy.

Although The Dharma Bums is set in the San Francisco area, most of the allusions in the novel point to Japan. In addition to the Buddhist title, there are references to R. H. Blyth's four-volume work on haiku, D. T. Suzuki, Okakura Tenshin's The Book of Tea, and the rock garden of Roanji. Never heard of these? Find out, the novel seems to be saying. No time? Buy some. Get yourself a gig with the Forest Service so that you can sit on a mountaintop and write haiku (Kerouac called his "Desolation Pops"). Or better yet, go to Japan like Japhy Ryder.

All of Kerouac's novels are autobiographical and most of the characters in his works are drawn from actual people. While the narrator of The Dharma Bums is one of Kerouac's many alter egos named Ray Smith, the hero of the book is Japhy Ryder, a nom de clef for the poet, translator, and environmental activist Gary Snyder. Japhy has come down from the mountains of Washington State where he worked as a lookout for the Forest Service to study Oriental languages in Berkeley. He is about to go to Kyoto to enter a Zen monastery, but before he does, there's time enough to tutor Smith (and the rest of us) about the meaning of Zen and the wonders of Japan.

According to Alan Watts, Kerouac got the Zen part only partly right. In an essay entitled "Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen" that was later published as a book by City Lights in 1959, Watts wrote that there were two strands of Zen "schools" in the West, "Beat Zen" and "Square Zen." "Beat Zen," Watts writes, "is a complex phenomenon. It ranges from a use of Zen for justifying sheer caprice in art, literature, and life to a very forceful social criticism . . . such as one may find in the poetry of Ginsberg, Whalen and Snyder, and rather unevenly, in Kerouac, who is always a shade too self-conscious, too subjective, and too strident to have the flavor of Zen." Kerouac, Watts continues, "confuses `anything goes' at the existential level with `anything goes' on the artistic and social levels."

Watts characterizes "Square Zen" as the "Zen of established tradition in Japan with its clearly defined hierarchy, its rigid discipline, and its specific tests of satori. More particularly, it is the kind of Zen adopted by Westerners studying in Japan, who will before long be bringing it back home."

What, then, is Zen? Zen is.

The problem for a Westerner is that two words alone are not going to be enough to explain the sublime. We need narrative and lots of it. And that is where Kerouac comes in. Kerouac wrote hundreds of thousands of words; and like a kid shooting baskets in the driveway, he missed a fair amount of the time. But he thought that if he just kept reading and writing and traveling, he would be able to distill what he'd recorded in his journals into works of literature.

Though the Beat Zen in The Dharma Bums may be sugarcoated, Kerouac got the narrative right. The Dharma Bums is a story of time and place, of Kerouac, Snyder, Ginsberg, Whalen, Rexroth, and McClure in San Francisco when North Beach and Berkeley and Marin County were the center of the world and Japan and the Cascade Mountains were on the horizon. And if the novel teaches us anything, it is that all you have to do to change what is in the center and what is on the horizon is to move.

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.)

The book starts off well with Kerouac meeting a young student of Zen Buddhism called Japhy Ryder and the two decide to climb the Matterhorn. I've been out to the Sierras myself and enjoyed the descriptions of the scenery, it reminded me of my time up there, sleeping in the forest, waking up in my sleeping bag covered in snow. It's really beautiful writing, and the story (a rarity for Kerouac, having a story) rushes forwards. There's also a nice buildup with Kerouac hopping freights, sleeping on beaches under the stars, etc. It's what makes Kerouac the writer he is. Kerouac, Ryder and Ginsberg have some nice back and forths debating poetry. Ginsberg's cynicism of Buddhism makes for an interesting and funny debate.

After the Matterhorn episode though, around page 80, the story is basically told. Kerouac has no idea how to progress the remaining 100 pages. I guess the point of the book was to talk about Buddhism but I never felt Kerouac was a serious student of it. Buddhism promotes abstinence of sex, drugs, drinking, all of which Kerouac partakes of frequently. He's like a lot of people I know who are into Buddhism - they take the parts they like and pretend they're the real thing. They're not, and neither is Kerouac.

Unfortunately, Kerouac's writing becomes even more meandering as he rambles on with pseudo-profound writing. Here's an actual quote which he thinks is enlightening: "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form and we're here forever in one form or another which is empty". See what I mean? And this goes on for 100 pages!
"On the Road" wasn't as revelatory to me as it was to some of my friends. It was disjointed, a bit annoying, not nearly as clever or interesting as it thought it was and ultimately quite boring. 10 years later, I decide to give him another try with "Dharma Bums" and initially I thought it was going to be great. What happened was that Kerouac's enthusiasm and naivety got in the way of the writing.

It would be too easy to type down passages from the book that shows how shallow the book's attempts at mysticism are or how Kerouac's writing makes him sound like a wide eyed innocent and inexperienced 13 year old from the country setting foot in the city for the first time. Suffice it to say, if you didn't like "On the Road" you won't like this. Nor will you if you are a student of Buddhism. If you like Kerouac or are 15 years old, you'll probably get a kick out of this.

I should mention the highlight of this edition was Jason's drawings. The front and back have brilliant drawings and he includes two comic strips on the inside flaps that are just great. Look up Jason's graphic novels, he is one of the best cartoonists around.