The Dharma Bums | 
|  | | | Title: | The Dharma Bums | | Author: | Jack Kerouac | | Publisher: | Penguin (Non-Classics) | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 27 May, 1976 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0140042520 / 9780140042528 | | List Price: | $14.00 | | You Save: | $2.80 | | Amazon Price: | $11.20 | |
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Book Description
Two ebullient young men are engaged in a passionate search for dharma, or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen way, which takes them climbing into the high Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude, a lesson that has a hard time surviving their forays into the pagan groves of San Francisco's Bohemia with its marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, experiments in "yabyum," and similar nonascetic pastimes. This autobiographical novel appeared just a year after the author's explosive On the Road put the Beat generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the best-seller lists. The same expansiveness, humor, and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novel ignites this one.
Amazon.com
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.
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Customer Reviews:
• Back To The Future 25 July, 2008
Now in 2008 I'm older then Kerouac ever became. But that's not important. When I first read the book I was nineteen, now I'm fifty nine. I still love the book and the writer and the characters. Of course Japhy and Han Shan and Ray. The search for wisdom, love, poetry, nature , living a pure life is from all times: Han Shan, Garry Schnyder, Jack Keouac in his best periode, no alcohol, no paranoia.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A19SQDS9DTH2OX
• Beatizen 14 December, 2007
This is a great example of the Beats' beautifully naive fascination with Buddhism. It is probably in my top 2 or 3 favorite Kerouac books. I would recommend it to anyone who likes the Beats, Poetry, Buddhism, backpacking, simple pleasures, etc.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3MFCY0W23GEQ7
• Fifty Years Old...and It Shows! 22 November, 2007
In my nearly forty years of life, I have never left a book unfinished.
Then I encountered "The Dharma Bums".
I picked up this book hoping for the entertaining and enlightening event that most of the other reviewers had found. Instead, all I got after slogging through nearly eighty pages of Kerouac's rambling and grammatically nightmarish prose, was a headache and the gnawing sensation that I'd been conned.
In all honesty, I don't "get" it. Why all the fuss? While I understand the historical significance of Kerouac and this book (along with "On The Road") to the counter-culture "Beat" movement of the fifties, it simply didn't connect.
The snippets of "Zen" wisdom were very rudimentary and the plot was non-existent. But it was the meandering writing style that made this book an absolutely miserable experience for me.
Perhaps when this book was first published it was a revolutionary piece of literature. Maybe it inspired a whole generation of repressed "Leave It To Beaver" Americans to hop a boxcar and explore the world while exploring their own identities. But it just seemed crude and archaic to me.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1C1HYVI5CI0Q1
• Traveling, Hiking, Buddhism 01 September, 2007
This book is perfect for anyone who enjoys traveling, hiking or the idea of freeing themselves from a 9 to 5. It's even better for those who feel all of these things simultaneously. Kerouac writes with a terse honesty and gives the reader so many opportunities to apply meaning to our own lives. He helps us to question our own role not in society, but in the search for ourselves.
This book is a little less dark than most of his other books, and it contains some of his best ideas. The protagonist uses another character, Japhy, to explore ideas of Buddhism (Japhy's zen versus his own version). This is never done in an academic way, but rather in the spirit of the book itself: a free, wandering exploration which does not seek overall resolution.
Kerouac also has a gift for self-degredation. He puts his own character and ideas down in subtle ways and moves on without worry for how it looks. Kerouac seems to write as he lives: without too much worry and always with a song in his heart. At one point Japhy becomes concerned about the protagonist (obviously a Kerouac alter-ego) because he is drinking so much. The pathos here is magnified when we know the biography of Kerouac's life.
This is a must read for people who live in the Northwest. His description of their mountain-climbing is excellent. I will let you find the good quotes on your own.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2PN5COWM5RBJN
• Tresure Found 18 August, 2008
As bad as it may sound I had not heard of Jack Kerouac until very recently. In my defense he died a year before I was born and although I have always been a reader it took until now for my reading interests to expand and give me this opportunity. I am enjoying Dharma Bums a lot as it speaks of things that are just as important today as they were when it was written like living a simple life is more free than living a consumer driven one. I have even started looking into Jack to know more on who he was and those he references in the book (look online to find who the real people are compared to the character names; one being Poet , author Gary Snyder). I also plan on buying the book "on the Road" scroll version which is the recomended version.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AYMRY4SI07Q2E
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