The Dharma Bums

View other editions of The Dharma Bums.
View books by Jack Kerouac.

Watery Buddhism and hippy ideals - Rated
The energy of this novel flows along like electricity when Ray Smith is hitch-hiking, drinking or bumming around Mexican backstreets. Kerouac writes feverishly and captures people, sights, sounds and smells so vividly that you really ache to experience them alongside him.

If only he'd stuck to this tried and tested recipe.

When Kerouac obsesses about Buddhism - the central and weakly rendered theme of this book - things lose their spark and his prose gets bogged down in inarticulate drivel. If the narrative had offered any true understanding of Buddhist teachings, I may well have embraced it more. But The Dharma Bums simply hand-picks elements from an ancient religion and turns them into a half-baked American excuse for sloth, self-indulgence and the worst kind of cultural conceit.

Witness how Japhy - the supposed prophet, genius and sage - uses the Tibetan practice of 'yabyum' (not even given a cursorary explanation in the text) purely to seduce as many girls as possible. Witness how Ray Smith seeks unparalleled purity but drinks, smokes and abuses drugs. The Buddhism portrayed in these pages is a Buddhism of convenience that anyone can dip into and out of whenever they please; that anyone can use to denounce the actions of another; that gets anyone out of difficult intellectual scrapes with a few mystic-sounding riddles...

Frankly, it began to annoy me and I suspect a true Buddhist would view this as a gross contamination of his/her core values. I almost laughed out loud when Ray Smith became so enlightened (by sitting in his mother's yard, unemployed for months) that he thought himself capable of miracles (because his mum's sore throat goes away) - but decides not to heal anyone else: "...because I was afraid of getting too interested in this and becoming vain. I was a little scared of all the responsibility." What humility!

What with the many passages of badly coined language and all these watery attempts at getting to the root of profound philosophical subjects, I found the novel ultimately to be childish and cringe-worthy.

But as I said at the start, when he's bumming around and chronicling the highways and byways of 1950s America, Kerouac's style is impeccable. That's why this offering is so amateur and polished by turns. I did enjoy it, but man - if you're going to preach, learn your subject!

American Buddhism - Rated
In this book Kerouac deals with his own unorthodox american Buddhism and that's Kerouac at his best. "Dharma Bums" is better than "On the Road", since the author has a lot more to express in this book.

Bloody great :D - Rated
Please don't expect an overview of Buddhism from Kerouac! This is not meant as an instructional manual.. However, if you enjoy a fantastically-paced, exciting novel from one of the 20th Century's most revered artists, look no further. Personally, I just cannot help but be moved by this book, be that in sadness or otherwise! Half the time I have a huge grin, the other a huge frown. In my opinion this is a much more entertaining read than 'On The Road', and I can't understand why it was not required reading at GCSE or A-Level. Go on, buy it!!

Worth every penny! - Rated
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.

Better Than 'On The Road' - Rated
Following the huge success of 'On The Road' Kerouac had the chance to publish some of his manuscripts that he had been carrying around the country from house to house for nearly ten years.
One of the first was the magnificent 'Dharma Bums', a semi-autobiographical account of his time on the West Coast in the company of Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac portrays himself as 'Ray Smith' and Snyder appears as the hero of the piece, a mountain-conquering poet Japhy Ryder. Ginsberg is thinly disguised as Alva Goldbook.
The piece centres on Kerouac and Snyder's trip into the mountains and the poetry scene around San Francisco in the mid 1950s. The famous 6 gallery reading that kicked off the Beat revolution is fictionalised.
A beautifully observed book, full of the lightness of the mountains and the allure of Buddhism, it is Kerouac at his finest. It lacks the relentless energy of 'On The Road', but has instead a simple charm of its own. One of the first books that kick-started the 'rucksack revolution', a must for the secret hippy in all of us.