Demasiado dharma, pouco vagabundo. :)

DNF. I wanted to like this so badly because it's one of those 'hip' books that fifteen year old me would have loved reading. Unfortunately, I've passed that hopeful, wild, don't-give-a-fuck age - and the me now - am very sure that alcoholic Zen 'Eat, Pray, Love' does not appeal to me at all.

I was very generous with my attempt to read this. I gave it a few tries, and I even tried listening to the audiobook but it put me to sleep like a tranquilliser shot each time I tried reading it. As an insomniac, I will probably keep the audiobook - and put it on whenever insomnia hits hard.

The writing is not awful, but I'm just not that into the content. Very preachy and dull, like an accidental date with a very 'hip' dude who smells a bit funky, and keeps a pet ex-battery chicken called 'Namaste'. You know exactly what I mean. The difference is that, those dudes always share their funky cigarettes. A consolation prize for what it's worth. But with Kerouac, I'm getting nothing. Nothing.

This has some amazing nature writing in it and some all right spiritual writing too. Love the way he describes enjoying being outside, out in open air, the little sounds of rabbits ticking by in the underbrush and such. The train hopping stuff is all right, the hitch hiking, etc. but my favorite is how he paints the landscape as this triumphantly beautiful thing—which of course it is. I like how he writes about his friends. He’s got unending great LINES (the daily Kerouac Twitter account was how I came into realization just how goddamn good his lines/sentences are on their own). The only other book of his I read was On The Road. This was much better, maybe. I ordered most of his other main books now.

Dharma Bums is set in the late fifties, in Jack Kerouac's life shortly after the events chronicled in On the Road. It focuses on his relationship with poet Gary Snyder and his exposure to Snyder's love of the outdoors and study of Buddhism. I know that some have criticized Kerouac's treatment of Buddhism, but I think those purists have missed the point, what I found compelling was the effect of Buddhism on the lives and lifestyles of the Beat poets and writers.

Reading this 50 years after publication allows for an interesting perspective. For example Kerouac's description on page 73 of the "Dharma Bum's" attitude towards consumerism and materialism anticipates many of the political and social movements that follow.

The following passage successfully predicts the "hippie" movement: " 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 glad 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 by being kind and also by strange an unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures"

What makes that 1950's passage even more interesting is that when that time did come, Kerouac hated it and the people that brought it.

Dharma Bums also foreshadows Kerouac's alcoholism. On page 33, during the narrative of Snyder's and Kerouac's ascent of California's Matterhorn Kerouac writes the following after Kerouac suggests getting wine before the climb (Smith is Kerouac and Japhy is Snyder)

"Okay Smith" said Japhy "but seems to me we shouldn't drink on a hiking trip"
"Ah, who gives a damn!"
"Okay, but look at all the money we saved by buying cheap dried foods for this weekend and all you're gonna do is drink it right down"
"That's the story of my life rich or poor and mostly poor and truly poor"

Later in the book, Kerouac recounts what he describes as a major fight with Snyder when they are walking in SF one afternoon and Kerouac starts drinking. Snyder reminds him that he had arranged for Kerouac to read his poems at an event that evening and suggest delaying the drinking until after the reading. Kerouac gets mad, gets drunk, skips the reading and goes home to get even drunker. In Kerouac's recounting Snyder comes home and tells him it was ok because everyone at the reading drank, but you can't help thinking that Snyder was simply trying not to make Kerouac feel guilty, but Kerouac's minimization at the time foreshadows their lives, Kerouac suffers a painful and bitter death from alcoholism within 10 years while Snyder continues to hike the Sierra Nevadas, teach, and write poetry 50 years later.

But these foreshadowings do not detract from what is a fun and ,exhilirating read, from the description of the famous poetry reading where Kerouac shouts "Go" "Go" Go" during the readings by Ginsberg, Snyder et al, to the 3 day going away party for Snyder and to the outdoor adventures by Snyder and Kerouac, exemplified by my favorite passage that of the final ascent of California's Matterhorn.

Soon he(Japhy/Snder) was a whole football field,a hundred yards, ahead of me, getting smaller. I looked back and like Lot's wife that did it. "This is too high" I yelled to Japhy in a panic. He didn't hear me. I raced a few more feet up and fell exhausted on my belly, slipping back just a little. "This is too high!" I yelled. I was really scared.Supposing I'd start to slip back for good, these screes might start sliding anytime anyway. That damn mountain goat Japhy, I could see him jumping through the foggy air up ahead from rock to rock, up, up, just the flash of his boot bottoms. "How can I keep up with a maniac like that?"

Kerouac eventually finds a ledge and stops and writes:

I nudged myself into the ledge and closed my eyes and thought"Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rocks and empty space" and with horror I remember the famous Zen saying
"When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing" The saying made my hair stand on end, it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah's straw mats. Now it was enough to make my heart pound and heart bleed for being born at all

Let me start by saying that I honestly think The Dharma Bums is much better than Kerouac's more famous book, On the Road. I first read The Dharma Bums when I was around 20, and it blew my mind — it became one of those books that helped shape my worldview. Now, rereading it, I’ve noticed different things. Like how the main character is pretty much always a little tipsy, and his friends keep pointing it out. Or how he twists Buddhist principles to justify his own actions. But this only adds depth to the text, and now it feels even more profound to me than before.

Kerouac brilliantly describes the search for spiritual enlightenment and freedom, blending Zen Buddhism and Eastern philosophy with the life of American beatniks in the '50s. Gary Snyder, who inspired one of the characters, called it Buddhist anarchism. The characters are all about finding harmony with nature and seeking truth through wandering and meditation. The book captures this vibe of freedom and rebellion against the conventional norms of society.

Kerouac’s writing style is something else — free-flowing, spontaneous, but full of life. After reading just a few pages, you feel this urge to drop everything and head for the mountains, to escape the chaos and find some peace and harmony in the simplicity of nature.

A beauteous mix of troubadour poetics, lapsed Catholicism, and sugarcoated Zen

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.

როდესაც კერუაკის პირველი წიგნი ,,გზაზე" წავიკითხე მივხვდი ,,დჰარმის მაწანწალები" დიდხანს დარჩებოდა ჩემს თაროზე გადაუშლელი, მაგრამ შემიძლია ვთქვა რომ ჯეკმა ამ წიგნით თავისი დანაშაული გამოისყიდა ჩემს თვალში ;დდ ეს ის წიგნია, რომელიც ნამდვილად გააღვიძებს შენში დაკარგულ მარცვალს და აღგიძრავს სურვილს შენც გაიზიარო იგივე ბედნიერება, თავგადასავლები, რომლებითაც აღსავსე იყო რეი სმიტის მთავარი პერსონაჟის ცხოვრება. ალბათ ყველას, ვისაც ექნება ბედნიერება წაიკითხოს ეს წიგნი, ექნება სურვილი განვლოს იგივე გზა, ასე ვარ მეც. კარგადაა დახატული იმ უკომპლექსო ადამიანების ცხოვრება, რომელთაც არ აინტერესებთ გარშემომყოფთა აზრი, დადიან შიშვლები, აწყობენ ორგიებს და ნამდვილად ყველაფერი ,,მაგრად კიდიათ", ამავე დროს კითხულობენ ძალიან ბევრს, არიან სტუმართმოყვარენი და ცდილობენ ყველას გაუწოდო დახმარების ხელი. არ შეიძლება არ აღვნიშნო ერთ-ერთი მთავარი პერსონაჟი ჯეფი, რომელიც ბუდიზმის ფანატიკოსია და ბუდას მოძღვრებას დიდი პასუხისმგებლობით ეკიდება. იგი საუკეთესო მასწავლებელია როგორც რეისთვის ასევე ჩვენთვის, სულ რომ წიგნს თავი დავანებოთ, იმდენად ბევრი კარგი რაღაცის გაგება შეგიძლია, რაც დაგაინტერესებს და გადაგაწყვეტინებს უფრო ჩაუღრმავდე და მეტი გაიგო ამა თუ იმ თემაზე. მოკლედ შემიძლია ვთქვა რომ ეს წიგნი ერთ-ერთი ფავორიტია ჩემთვის და დიდი იმედი მაქვს მეც მექნებება საშუალება ასეთივე თავგადასავლებში გამოვცადო საკუთარი თავი.

‎آیا ما فرشتگان مطرودی نیستیم که نمی‌خواستیم باور کنیم که هیچ یعنی هیچ، و آنگاه به دنیا آمدیم که آنهایی را که دوست‌شان داریم، و دوستان عزیزمان را، یکی یکی از دست بدهیم و آخرش هم زندگی خودمان را، تا بهمان ثابت شود که هیچ یعنی هیچ؟...

‎از متن کتاب

It would be redundant to return to the contribution of Jack Kérouac's work to the American counterculture of the 60s. On the Road is the matrix. The author's figure is more ambivalent, if not frankly controversial; he was an individualist, not a leader. Less openly autobiographical, The Dharma Bums, presented as a novel, remains a work à clef; it is still about Jack and his knowledge that it is about. There is still talk of travel, but this is no longer the ultimate affirmation of freedom from all contingent attachments; it is only a means for a quest that aims to be more spiritual. We have the right to ask questions, even to raise objections. Indeed, our acolytes understand how to live, share with people in need, and put their bodies to the test to achieve spiritual awakening. We attack oriental maxims advocating wisdom and the emptiness of all attachment; we respect decorum and aesthetics to match. But aside from that, we drink immoderately; we smoke willingly; we consume meat with relish; we copulate when we want, and we free-ride when necessary. So isn't all this transcendentalist and Buddhist phraseology reduced to nonsense, to claptrap, to chimeras more likely to justify specific subsidence in a marginal way of life than to be the actual manifestation of an ardent need for absolute?
If you manage to ignore all this untimely spiritualism, what paradoxically emerges from Jack Kérouac's style is a concern for authenticity, simplicity, and a certain liveliness. But he is the man of work. With On the Road, everything has been said and consumed. The rest is just pleasant variation. That doesn't prevent us from always being tempted to return for a spin by repurchasing one of his novels.

داستانی با سبک خاص جک کروآک، یعنی نوشتار خود به خودی. ملقمه ای از پانک، بودیسم و آنارشیسم در قالب روایتی ساده و صمیمی از ولگردی های لذت بخش..
پی نوشت: دارما در بودیسم به معنای حقیقتی است که هستی بر آن استوار است و از آن نظم می گیرد.
.....
خوشحال، تنها با شلوارک شنا، برهنه پا، ژولیده مو، آوازخوان، می خوران، تف اندازان، ورجه وورجه کنان، این است راه زیستن، یکسره تنها و آزاد روی شنهای نرم ساحل، کنار آه و ناله ی دریا، با ستارگان گرم که می افتذ انعکاسشان بر آبهای سطح سیال رودخانه..

I first read The Dharma Bums in about 1969. It was our instructional manual on "how to be a hippie." The long, late-night drug and alcohol fueled parties, the disdain for money and suburbia and middle class life, the simple foods and hanging out on the floor. Hiking in the woods, free love, earth mothers and footloose uncommitted men.

As soon as my first husband and I reached San Francisco after driving and camping our way across America from Michigan, we climbed up to Mount Tamalpais and got high with all the hippies and their naked children in a mountain meadow. The only thing we didn't do is ride the rails, but we did sometimes hitchhike and we always picked up hitchhikers.

All these scenarios and more fill the pages of The Dharma Bums in Jack Kerouac's breathless prose. He is searching through Buddihism, poetry, and friendship for a life that makes sense. Kerouac's life was brief. At that breakneck pace and that level of alcohol use, he was bound to burn out young.

But along with a very few others, right smack in the middle of the 20th century, he created a sensibility which has infected spiritual seekers, writers, musicians and artists right up to the present. Not a man to marry, not a man to depend on in any way, Jack Kerouac had another mission on this earth and I thank him to this day for capturing both the incipient sadness and the rarely achieved joy of life.

I don't know if I had been around in 1956 that I would have enjoyed the real, larger-than-life Jack Kerouac showing up at my home, especially if he stayed more than a week. He could be a hard-drinking, rowdy, lazy, loud, mouthy pain in the ass, but, God and Buddha, what a writer!

The Man from Lowell, Massachusetts' odyssey across America has a lot of the elements that made ON THE ROAD an American classic: a bit of train-hopping hoboism, hitch-hiking hither and yon, mid-Century San Fran Poetry Slams, free-loading, drinking, more freeloading, philosophizing, nudity, and its kin, casual sex.

And some great jazzy prose.

Also, there is much Buddhism.

There isn't a lot of drama here, but this is Kerouac operating on all eight cylinders, "atop the Underwood", especially in the last chapters. All alone on a fire-watching station in the Cascades aptly named Desolation Peak, he delivers a wonderful summation of the joys of a life devoted to something rebellious and a little crazy.

Also, there is much Buddhism.

So, hey, if you loved Kerouac's most famous work, treat yourself to this one!