That's a completely nostalgic four stars of course. Has there been a writer whose reputation has plummeted quite so much between the 70s and now as jolly Jack and his tales of merry misogynism? But like Bob Dylan says

While riding on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the morn

With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
We never thought we could ever get old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one

As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split

Well that was me and my pals. I know where each of them are to this day, but we don't see each other. The choices multiplied and it became no longer easy to tell black from white.
Back then we built a whole galaxy of heroes up from wild trips to the art house cinema to quarry Bergman or Pasolini from the granite cliffs of existentialism, or raids on libraries and second hand bookshops when we got to hear first about Kerouac and Kesey, not to mention Tolkien and Mervyn Peake, not to mention Emily Dickinson and Captain Beefheart and folk music and Alan Lomax and Alan Watts and John Fahey and Buffy Sainte-Marie. In those days every discovery hit like an express train and every bookshelf held high explosives. Life is not lived at that intensity for too many years. So forgive me for my four stars for Kerouac, the old bum, the old broke down disgraced beat with his typing not writing and every other reviewer on this site liking to put the boot in, and justified too, really, they're not good books - would I recommed any young person with any marbles to read nearly the whole of Kerouac's pile of typing as I myself did? NO!! Read almost anything BUT Kerouac! But my half damp eyes are staring back to that room. It was on Willow Road in Carlton. You can find it on Google Earth but some other people live there now.

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.

Πολλά ταξίδια, φεύγει το μυαλό και λες τι ωραία που θα ήταν να ζούσαμε έτσι.
Από την άλλη έχει και μπόλικη φιλοσοφία του βουδισμού, που δεν είμαι και μεγάλος φαν. Εκεί κουράζει λίγο.
Σίγουρα όμως αξίζει τον χρόνο σας.

I've had this book since 2016, staring at me for the longest time. I finally decided to pick it up, only to realize that I should read On The Road first, then this book.

But did that stop me? No.

A semi-fictional book about Jack Kerouac, I found it very easy to follow and loved the spontaneous conversations between the main characters. It is about finding inner peace, the "zen", living a simple life, and the teaching of Buddhism.

It takes us through the journey of Ray Smith (Jack Kerouac), where he enjoyed city life with all its parties, alcohol & drugs; then moves into the wild where he goes mountaineering & hiking, then hitchhiking through the west of USA.

I wasn't really invested so much into the Buddhism part; although some of the philosophies were interesting, I just found myself resonating so much with the need to experience a simple life and the journey of self-discovery.

I did this as an audiobook, narrated by the actor Ethan Hawke. It's probably the main reason why I enjoyed it so much! He made me travel with the author and understand his thoughts.

Now I want to read On The Road.

In a very real sense, this book can save your soul.

I was charmed and uplifted by this reflective, poetic vision of a life of rambling in California and the Pacific Northwest, a thinly veiled fictional portrayal of Kerouac’s friendship with poet Gary Snyder in the 50’s. While “On the Road” felt like a portrait of America and the key characters often felt a bit lost and self-centered, here the action is more attuned to connections with nature and an exultant exploration of Buddhist outlooks. Like the other book it reads more like a memoir and travel book than a novel, and that is fine by me as a means to capture the joy in living.

The story begins with the Kerouac avatar, Ray Smith, hopping a freight train in Los Angeles on a journey to San Francisco and sharing a mutually charitable encounter with a hobo, whom he considers a “Dharma Bum” like himself:
But then I really believed in the reality of charity and kindness and humility and zeal and neutral tranquility and wisdom and ecstasy, and I believed that I was an old time bhikku in modern clothes wandering the world (usually the immense triangular arc of New York to Mexico City to San Francisco) in order to turn the wheel of the True Meaning, or Dharma, and gain merit for myself as a future Buddha (Awakener) and as a future Hero in Paradise.

It’s fun to experience his first encounter with Snyder, named Japhy Ryder, and experience his reading at an historic poetry reading where Alan Ginsburg (aka Alvah Goodbook) first performed “Howl” (here tagged “Wail”). Ryder’s magnetism is captured in first impressions:
He was wiry, suntanned, vigorous, open, all howdies and glad talk and even yelling hello to bums on the street and when asked a question answered right off the bat from the top or bottom if his mind I don’t know which and always in a sprightly sparkling way.

He appreciates Ryder as unpretentious and down to earth compared to the effete intellectuals of the city and respects his Oriental scholarship as a translator of ancient Buddhist poetry and texts. But they differ in the version of their Buddhist affinities:
“Listen Japhy,” I said, “I’m not a Zen Buddhist, I’m an old fashioned dreamy Hinayana coward of later Mahayanism,” and so forth into the night, my contention being that Zen Buddhism didn’t concentrate on kindness so much as on confusing the intellect to make it perceive the illusion of all sources of things.
“It’s mean” I complained. “All those Zen Masters throwing young kids in the mud because they can’t answer their silly word questions.”
“That’s because they want them to realize mud is better than words, boy.”

While both live ascetically with few belongings, a practical difference between them is that Smith is effectively celibate, while Ryder is an exuberant practitioner of free love in advance of the hippies a decade later. His girlfriend Princess drops over at his place when Smith and Goldbook are there, and Ryder initiates them into the Buddhist ritual lovemaking called yabyum.
“This is what they do in the temples of Tibet. It’s a holy ceremony, it’s done just like this in front of chanting priests. People pray and recite Om Mani Pahdme Hum, which means Amen the Thunderbolt in the Dark Void. I’m the thunderbolt and Princess is the dark void, see.
…”Take off your clothes and join in, Smith!”
…All the peaceful celibacy of my Buddhism was going down the drain.

There are notable events covered in the rest of the book. A climb of Matterhorn Peak in the Sierra Nevada with Ryder and an odd friend feels like a cross between the spiritual quest of “The Snow Leopard” and comic shenanigans of “A Walk in the Woods”. A hitchhiking trip to North Carolina to spend some winter months with his mother gets us a slice of Americana and a lot of communing with nature for his daily meditations in the woods. Finally, through Ryder’s connections and experience as a woodsman, Smith spends a summer as a fire watchman at an isolated cabin in the mountains of Washington. The book ends with a wild three-day goodbye party for Ryder preceding his journey to a scholarly job in Japan.

All in all, a satisfying and happy read.

n  "But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious."n

Oh, Jack, what a human being you were. Ever since I learned more about his life and his mind, I can't read a book like this objectively anymore. Thankfully, I don't have to; thankfully, it was never meant to.



Dharma Bums is, like all of Kerouac's novels, heavily inspired by his own life. It circles around two young men whose quest for Truth lead them on an odyssey from parties and poetry sessions in San Francisco to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.

Our protagonist Ray Smith is an alter ego of Kerouac's and we meet him as a man trying to find his place in the world. When he crosses paths with a Zen intellectual artistic Buddhist named Japhy (a character based on the poet Gary Snyder), he is being introduced to a new way of seeing life.

n  "When I discovered Buddhism and all I suddenly felt that I had lived in a previous lifetime innumerable ages ago and now because of faults and sins in that lifetime I was being degraded to a more grievous domain of existence and my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom."n

The novel is written in a (typically Beat) rambling and jumpy kind of way, which is not for everyone, but it allows you to dive into Ray Smith's mind and get to know him as an over-thinking, a natural worrier. Shy, but sociable. People worry about him. He knows it and it affects him. He is somebody who wants to live and experience, but appreciate and give back just the same, if only he knew how to. In Dharma Bums we follow him as he tries to use the concepts of Buddhism in order to do so. It's an inquisitive book, a thoughtful one and I enjoyed following Ray on his journey very much. It feels appropriate to leave you with a conclusion he came to himself:

n  "I have all the time in the world from life to life to do what is to do, to do what is done, to do the timeless doing, infinitely perfect within, why cry, why worry, perfect like mind essence and the minds of banana peels."n

Jag har återvänt från min lässvacka och är redo att med nya tag ta mig an bokåret 2021.Fast kanske inte med en reading challenge, denna gång. Någon slags förbannelse verkar vila över mig som gör att jag alltid läser typ 2 böcker från mitt uppsatta mål, vilket inte är jättemotiverande att behöva se varje december...

Så - de senaste två månaderna har jag mödosamt tuggat mig igenom den här jävla skiten. Eller okej, så farligt var det inte. Men jag fick hela boken igenom en känsla av att den hade kunnat vara mycket kortare, alternativt längre (?), bara nånting som hade gett den lite mer substans. För Kerouac känns så himla pladdrig det är buddha hit och bums dit om vartannat sida efter sida. Utläggningarna om buddhismen är intressanta och det känns dom att dialogerna innehåller nåt mer, men övergångarna är abrupta och prosan känns som att man inte riktigt hinner ”fånga den” när man läser. Kvinnoskildringarna har som väntat lite att önska och jag tycker nog faktiskt inte ens att man kommer Kerouac själv särskilt på djupet. Tyckte nästan de finaste porträtten var av de människor han stötte på under all hitchhiking. Korta men talande, på nåt vis.

Ray och Japhy slåss ju lite med att inkorporera zen-buddhismen i ett cityliv, och hela den aspekten gillade jag. Som bäst var den i början och i slutet, när det klättras i berg. Scenen när Ray (Kerouacs alter ego) tillslut springer nedför Matterhorn Peak var fin, och naturskildringarna som ledde upp till den var vackra. Likaså slutet - Ray finner sig själv på Desolation Peak och narrativet ändras. Lite mäktigt ändå! Vill också ut och klättra i berg nu (eller mest se utsikten, kanske).


Vi får väl se om jag orkar ta mig an någon mer bok av den spirituelle promeneraren i framtiden. Just nu är jag mest sugen på att sätta tänderna i något helt annat dock. Jag tror jag börjar ogilla vilken bok som helst om jag drar ut på det för mycket, så man får väl ta den här recensionen med en nypa salt. Ber för mindre kvällsplugg framöver och mer själs-(läs)ro!

Rereading the Dharma Bums after probably a ten-year hiatus, I am struck by how foreign the beatniks seem to us today and how that impression must have been magnified tenfold for the Leave It To Beaver folks whom we are told ran the country back in the fifties. Then again Ray, Kerouac's protagonist, hitchhiked back and forth across America and found a surprising degree of tolerance if not admiration from the people stopping to give him a ride. Maybe that's just the nature of people on the move or maybe America wasn't really 100% homogenous like the beats and the flower children who followed them claimed.

It would do "the kids today" good to read this book. I'll wager at least half of them won't get past the poetic language with which Kerouac writes his alleged prose. For the texting generation, Kerouac might as well be Shakespeare. A quick read fails to fully appreciate the music in his words. Slow down and enjoy.

For those willing to embrace this new language, a world governed by thought, belief, emotion, experience, appreciation for nature and attention to basic human needs is unveiled; a world plunked down in the midst of the newborn consumer-driven American society governed by brands, advertising, the lure of "convenience," and the first hesitant salvos of pop culture. Kerouac's characters are as well-versed in Buddhism as the Middle America folks they meet are fluent in Christianity. For an introduction to American Zen Buddhism as it emerged in the beat culture of the fifties and early sixties, read Alan Watt's The Way of Zen and then read The Dharma Bums, looking up and studying every reference to Buddhism you don't understand. It's on my list of things to do, along with hiking to Desolation Peak. If you ever listened to the Doors and didn't understand why Jim Morrison sang "the West is the best," read The Dharma Bums and then Steinbeck's Cannery Row and you'll begin to see, if not agree. It wouldn't have broken my heart if the last half of the book had been devoted to Ray's two months on Desolation Peak instead of just the last ten pages, but his adventures hitch-hiking, sitting in his family's woods, sleeping beneath the stars and eucalyptus trees, and riding the rails on the Midnight Ghost are worth every page devoted to them.

Qué gran viaje.

Once Kerouac — *cough* I mean Ray — begins to describe his opposition to people who work real jobs, and waxes on about how they all hate him because they too could be "free" like him, all while taking cash handouts from his mother — or when he self-seriously describes himself as having reached egolessness, that he's become a Bodhisattva, all while getting piss-drunk and trying to screw and eat and party, without a shred of irony — or when, as many a-time, he patronizingly explains to some "simpleton" that nothing matters, because reality is an illusion (as he attempts to convince them to quit their jobs, or let him heal their diseases with a vision) — it becomes clear that there is, in fact, a direct through-line from Kerouac to the same sorts of ignorantly privileged college kids with dreads who arrogantly prattle about how important it is that we all take a poverty vacation to India.

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums: "Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara."

Kerouac gives us the rambling masterpiece of a sentence with no punctuation and yet chock-full of description and character. The poverty/liberty of "hopping a freight", the locale firmly rooted in hippy California (Los Angeles, Santa Barbara), the laziness of contemplating the clouds: all of these are central to the narrator's character and his attitude. He is one with the road ("we rolled north") and in a meditative mood and this feeling saturates every page of this rollicking, humorous, orgasmic Beat classic. Just reading the phrase makes me want to throw off all the yokes of society and...ok enough of that...and on to the last one.