Οι "αλήτες του Ντάρμα" είναι το ταξίδι του Ρέι Σμίθ (άλτερ έγκο του Κέρουακ) και των φίλων του (άλτερ έγκο άλλων δημοφιλών εκπροσώπων της μπίτνικ λογοτεχνίας) μέσα στον κόσμο του βουδισμού, γραμμένο με τον γνωστό "road" τρόπο του Κέρουακ. Η διάχυτη πρόζα ξεδιπλώνει σκηνικά (φανταστικά και μη) που αποπνέουν ελευθερία, διαχυτικότητα, αισιοδοξία και λίγη φιλοσοφία. Όπως είναι αναμενόμενο το ανάγνωσμα μοιάζει περισσότερο με ημερολόγιο παρά με βιβλίο φιλοσοφίας, καθώς άλλωστε η σχέση με τον βουδισμό είναι φανερά επιδερμική. Η ανύπαρκτη ανάπτυξη και η μηδενική πλοκή ίσως ενοχλήσει αρκετούς και όχι άδικα: δεν είναι ιδιαίτερα εύκολο ανάγνωσμα, όχι λόγω των τυχών πολύπλοκων εννοιών που μπορεί να περιέχει αλλά λόγω της αδυναμίας ανάπτυξης του: μοιάζει σαν να μην "πηγαίνει" πουθενά. Σε κάθε περίπτωση δεν πρόκειται για ένα συμβατικό βιβλίο αλλά για ένα ταξίδι στο μυαλό ενός μπίτνικ.

I enjoyed reading the euphoric parts. I think Kerouac captures that awestruck, carefree feeling well.

But...isn't the book partially a satire? The articles I've read act like Kerouac's being totally serious, and I just don't believe that. There's an undeniable "look at me and my idiot buddies" vibe, no?

So 4 stars assuming he's making fun of himself a bit. If not: 2.5 stars and an eye roll.

My second Kerouac, after the mandatory On the Road. This felt like a more calming and serene exploration of similar themes when compared to On the Road, boasting only a small percentage of the previously rough prose. I felt On the Road to be more about the discovery of meaning in the journey of life within an intimate connection with others. This was more traditionally personal. Others were there (Japhy, Morley). But the peak moments were Ray allowing himself to be with himself, explore vague Zen and Buddhist concepts. People were throwing misused terms at each other and justifying any and all behaviour, but by god it was a good time. Perhaps the most poignant moments were when Ray spent time on Desolation Peak, being immersed in himself and the nature about him.

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

When I was in college, I dated a guy who was the drummer for a band named the Dharma Bums. Some of the guys in the band were fans of Kerouac. I often wondered what the book was about and when I found it at a used book sale, I bought it for a $1.
The book is about a young self-centered guy who rides railcars around the country meeting bums who he considers wise and enlightened. One of the main characteristics to being enlightened according to everyone in the book is to remain jobless. Every one of these bums, including the young man, believes himself to be so wise and intelligent, but really they are all blubbering drunken idiots. Women are sexual objects that are to be used for pleasure or inspiration. Their poetry is a joke! They seem to be interested in Buddhism and Christianity, however they twist the religions into a morphed form that suits them better.
The truth: I only read half the book because it was all I could stomach. The writing itself was the worst I have ever read. It gave me terrible depressing nightmares, and life is too damn short to waste my time on garbage like this! AND, it is the Sierra, not the Sierras!
Before someone tells me I don't get it, I am the first in line for a life of less possessions and less of society's bullshit. I find nature the best place to refuel. Making a living should not be about making as much money as you can or trying to keep up with society's expectations. But I believe life shouldn't be about just ourselves, but working to create a better world. To find a career that you enjoy, one that you love so that it isn't work, gives your life far more meaning than getting drunk and riding railcars around the country.. I would rather read a book on real Buddhism.

Enfant terrible, a unique individual, jazz lover and a poet; this book, was written when Jack Kerouac was thirty-six years old. He was at the forefront of the Beat Generation in California in the fifties, through to his death in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.

I kept on telling myself this is not my kind of book and I’m not enjoying myself but who was I trying to kid. Yes, it’s “raw in thought” but spirituality flows throughout, even though the catholic faith is viewed through the eyes of (Zen) Buddhism.

I have no doubt that Kerouac's own unique background, i.e. the “gene pool”, was responsible for bringing to life an individual who loved company, but who could also be more than content to spend time on his own, thinking about nature and the wonders of our planet. I can so readily equate to this fact.

It was interesting to read that Kerouac's parents, Leo and Gabrielle, were immigrants from Quebec, Canada; and that Kerouac learned to speak French at home before he learned English at school.

The first paragraph in the introduction to the book could not have been quoted better as to how I came to arrive at my own views about Jack Kerouac:

“When Gary Snyder, the Zen poet immortalized as ‘Japhy Ryder’ in The Dharma Bums, first met Jack Kerouac in San Francisco in the fall of 1955, he sensed about him ‘a palpable aura of fame and death’ ”.

This is indeed a “magical mystery tour” which accesses the innermost recesses of this author’s inquisitive, stimulating but also soul-searching mind and, dare I say it, an individual who was frequently inebriated. This “mystery” is shown in Ray Smith’s (I believe this is Jack Kerouac himself) life, who makes massive treks (3,000 miles) across the United States; his adventures passing through Mexico, back into the US, and then taken by a trucker (Beaudry was his name) back into Mexico; who offered to give him a ride if in exchange he could show the trucker hot spots such as the Mexican whore houses. Ray went along with this as it was all part and parcel of his journey to Rocky Mount, North Carolina where he was planning to spend Christmas with his mother.

“ Roll up, roll up for the magical mystery tour, step right this way.
Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour…
Roll up (and) that’s an invitation up for the mystery tour.
Roll up to make a reservation, roll up for the mystery tour.
The magical mystery tour is waiting to take you away.”

This work had the most profound effect on me both emotionally and spiritually, and with the spectacular suicide of Rosie, caused me to sink to quite a low level of despondency within myself.

Ray was happy in San Francisco and had gone over “to Rosie’s place to see Cody and Rosie.” Cody was worried about her: “She says she wrote out a list of all our names and all our sins, she says, and then tried to flush them down the toilet where she works, and the long list of paper stuck in the toilet and they had to send for some sanitation character to clean up the mess…she’s nuts.”

Believing that she and her friends were all done for, Rosie slashes her wrists and was taken care of, however, she had obviously made up her mind what she had to do because she returns home and dramatically states to Ray:

“This is my last night on earth” and indeed her suicide was truly spectacular.

Ray was always a worry for his friends. This is shown with Japhy’s concerns about his friend’s drinking habits just before he goes off to Japan.

“ ‘You’re just drinking too much all the time, I don’t see how you’re even going to gain enlightenment and stay out of the mountains, you’ll always be coming down the hill spending your bean money on wine and finally you’ll end up lying in the street in the rain, dead drunk, and then they’ll take you away and you’ll have to be reborn a teetotalin bartender to atone for your karma.’

Ray immediately thought, “He was really sad about it, and worried about me, and I just went on drinking.”

Ray also considered himself a “religious wanderer”, who loved to meditate:

“One night I was meditating in such perfect stillness that two mosquitoes came and sat on each of my cheekbones and stayed there for a long time without biting and then went away without biting.”

There’s humor (yodeling whilst hiking up the Matterhorn with Japhy and Henry Morley, whom Ray found mad and also boring; still the poets were having a great time); wistfulness (Japhy and his meditation: his “Bodhisattvas), sexual expression with free love, depression, beauty, all pervade this book. Knowing though that Ray was partial to his alcohol, I wondered what “spiritual” state he was in when he was writing this.

Thinking about this work brings to mind a reporter I once knew in Fleet Street, London. He best reporting was always achieved after he’d had a “liquid lunch” and the words just poured like “pearls from heaven”. Unfortunately, this literary genius ended with an early demise.

So in conclusion, we have here a highly religious (Catholicism) man, who had a joy for life, poetry and (Zen) Buddhism. It was this religion that was the bedrock of all his ideas; be it in nature, thoughts, friends, families and all the wonders of our universe. So what compelled such a talented individual to cross the final boundary and relentlessly slide and fall towards his own self-afflicted decline to the inevitable, leading to such an early death in his forties? Was the devil within him, I wonder.

Due to this I must read his first book, “On the Road” but I’ve been told that it’s not as good as Kerouac’s second. Well I’ll judge that for myself. It was such a pleasure for me reading this book and such a cause for reflection of our own lives.

Kerouac is innocent and rowdy and loco, unjaded and earnest, a real goodfellow. I tried reading On the Road as a high schooler and was unimpressed, I was too serious and uptight. I lacked experience. This time around I get the Zen stuff, yo, I was put off at first by his attempts at telling what is impossible to tell, but he reveals himself, he risks ridicule to show how sincere he feels, and how arrogant too, like when Rosie dies and he thinks if only she had listened to him, if only she knew what he knew. He writes the pure callow self-centeredness of first discovery, not yet humbled, convinced of his singular chosenness, here to show the world how it’s really done, what’s really possible. And the amazing thing is he does, did, he introduced the West to Buddhism in a way that, as far as I know, hadn’t been done before. There’s a wildness that gradually gains harder edges as the story wears on, becomes slightly less ebullient, more tame in the way of impending bitterness, but then not at all bitter, just the slight threatening impending-ness of it, because the world is gonna change and you know it and he may or may not know it, but certainly his world is changing and nothing of course can stay the same, including good old Japhy. And then there is that last section, he writes the "religious" experience of extended solitude in nature with such joy and authenticity. I have wondered for years how to convey the experience of connecting with God, with Source, sans sentimentality. I am not exactly sure how he does it, my hunch is that he succeeds by constantly reconnecting with the physical world, rather than going up into his head in airy transcendence. He puts you in touch with the land and the air and the stars in a way like no other. It’s a natural world and in the natural world people eat and smoke and piss and get agitated for no good reason and madness must be followed by peace and peace by madness. In someone else words, “After the ecstasy, the laundry.” Ray experiences moments of enlightenment, followed by feeding the cat (135). They get sick of parties and sick of each other. And they are also so dearly devoted, it’s a man’s man’s world, and there is such tenderness in these male friendships. Women are good girls or mad girls or hangers-on, but that’s fitting for this period in the narrator’s life, trying as he is to stick to celibacy (with hints of something obviously beneath that, like a deep-seated fear of women, a little boy’s awe and sense of mystery).

You either get it or you don’t, I think, and this time around I got it.

This novel still retains Kerouac's characteristic style and does not feel heavy with his lamentations about his life as a known author, as what happens in most of his other novels.

It's well written, humorous with good scenes and memorable characters.

I think it's fair to say I really enjoyed this one.

همیشه دلم می‌خواست از این نویسنده کتاب بخونم چون که نویسنده از نسل بیت هست،کنجکاو شدم کتاباشو بخونم‌.
خوندن این کتاب تجربه‌ی جدیدی بود و خوشم آومد قطعا دوباره ازش میخونم.
کتابی که‌ مارو به طبیعت و جاده ها میبره.

აუცილებლად ჯაყჯაყა ტრანსპორტში და მატარებლის ბაქნებზე საკითხავი წიგნი

'The world is nothing but mind, and what is the mind? The mind is nothing but the world, goddammit!'

This book is loosely based on Kerouac's own life experiences painting a picture of the counter-culture movement around the 50s. It is energetically recounted uncovering his experimental hippie lifestyle of Buddhism, hikes, orgies, et al. which in my view builds deeper experiences, friendships, and wisdom.

It is an extremely sensational read, and Kerouac's passionate delivery transports you to rewarding scenic spots (that may bring you wisdom, comfort, or escape) from the comforts of your armchair. My thoughts revolve around what sustains this lifestyle, and what factors push to break the consistency of this path to become worldly again.

'I meditated and prayed. There just isn't any kind of night's sleep in the world that can compare with the night's sleep you get in the desert winter night, providing you're good and warm in a duck-down bag. The silence is so intense that you can hear your own blood roar in your ears but louder than by far is the mysterious roar which I always identify with the roaring of the diamond of wisdom, the mysterious roar of silence itself, which is a great Shhhh reminding you of something you've seem to have forgotten in the stress of your days since birth.'

i‘ve learned A LOT about alcohol, sex and hikes in the mountains, but not about Buddhism

This was really a pleasant surprise. After making my way through "On the Road" and a few other things by Kerouac, I had come to the conclusion that the dude is a hack, and that the other Beats were really on some way better shit. I just couldn't feel that "rambling" ass style that he writes in, even though I acknowledge that it was a conscious decision of his to write that way.

I get it -- he writes the way he travels, making quick decisions and trying to be spontaneous and spiritual. But to me it's kind of just a garbage decision stylistically...personally, I like writers to show a little discipline and take heed to the laws of grammar and punctuation. Plus I think he was just drunk half the time. I write a lot of stuff when I'm drunk too -- it doesn't mean I would try and get it published unless I sat down and edited the fuck out of it, with a clear head one day. Drugs and booze can be good for the creative process, but at some point you've got to sit down and get serious, whittle down your ideas to a respectable form.

Which is what I think Kerouac did here. There is some great writing in "Dharma Bums", and even when he rambles, it flows with the ease and beauty of a rolling freight train, or a babbling brook. Finally, you feel like one of Kerouac's characters have gained something useful and spiritual from the life of being a hobo. Ray Smith, the protagonist, embodies the strengths and faults of a lot of guys I know, myself included sometimes. I only wish I could have been around in the days where the happily homeless poets would congregate in San Francisco, and talk about the kind of shit that these guys do. Sadly, the days where stuff like this happens in America are pretty much long gone, I fear.

I think I will take a second look at some more Kerouac after being pretty durn impressed by this. Namely, "Big Sur" is now on the list. After taking in "The Dharma Bums" and the fantastic introduction which was included in the edition I read, I feel a newfound respect for what Jack K did and the legacy he left behind. He was far from perfect, and a lot of the writing and relationships he left behind make this more than evident. But more than anything I think Kerouac was honest (about everything including his own self-demise, which he foreshadows eerily in parts of this novel). If honesty was his main goal as a writer, in that respect he was definitely a success.

One last thing I found cool about "The Dharma Bums" - a lot of American cultural references are derived from this novel. Not only from the hippies and the neo-hippies, but this is a very influential work in terms of modern artistry. The Anticon Records rappers/poets collective (including Dose One, Why?, and others) referenced this book heavily in a lot of their stuff during the late 90's/early 2000's Experimental Hip Hop Rennaissance. Lines like:

"Fresh bus station water...and it all ends up in tears anyway"

were lifted directly from the text, and put onto all these weird hip hop records I've been listening to for the past decade. I had no idea these were quotes from "Dharma Bums", but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Life and art tend to have circular qualities, indeed.