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Dharma Bum
 
 

Dharma Bum (Paperback)

by Jack Kerouac (Author) "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..." (more)
4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 244 pages
  • Publisher: Prentice-Hall; New edition edition (April 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140042520
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140042528
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 1.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 617,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #43 in  Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism > Literary Theory & Movements > Beat Generation
    #62 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Kerouac, Jack

Product Description

Product Description
From the author of "On The Road" comes this story of two men enganged 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.

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First Sentence
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. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

16 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (4)
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Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth every penny!, 26 Mar 2004
By A Customer
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.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Watery Buddhism and hippy ideals, 5 Mar 2008
By Rusty (London, UK) - See all my reviews
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!
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, 14 Oct 2003
Some people wonder what all the hype is about with Kerouac. Even I have found some of his other works tiring in places, although there is no doubting his unique style and his genius.
Dharma Bums is my favourite - not just my favourite Kerouac but quite possibly my favourite book ever. Gentle and easy to read it is also at times evocative and deep. It touches on Zen Buddhism without trying to be clever or philisophical and is in some ways sad and in others heartwarming.
If you've ever struggled with Kerouac, or Zen for that matter, this is a good place to start again.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Kerouac searching for something to believe in
Jack Kerouac has been critised by other reviewers here, and also at the time, for 'dabbling' in Buddhism with The Dharma Bums. Buddhist scholars like D. Read more
Published 15 days ago by Griffo

5.0 out of 5 stars Glorious and Uplifting
I feel the need to point out, before i begin, that all of my Kerouac books have been lent out to various friends of mine, and none show any signs of returning soon. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Joseph Fitt-palmer

4.0 out of 5 stars great
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, it doesn't have an explosive story line but I don't think by any means that that makes the novel weak. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Ms. L. Smith

5.0 out of 5 stars American Buddhism
In this book Kerouac deals with his own unorthodox american Buddhism and that's Kerouac at his best. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Rasmus Oerndrup

5.0 out of 5 stars Bloody great :D
Please don't expect an overview of Buddhism from Kerouac! This is not meant as an instructional manual.. Read more
Published on 11 Jun 2007 by D. Gwynne

5.0 out of 5 stars Better Than 'On The Road'
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... Read more
Published on 24 Nov 2003 by Jim-San

4.0 out of 5 stars Another muse for Kerouac
...this short novel is one of his better works.
OK, so it's not as sharp a prosody as "On the Road", but then Kerouac is dwelling in heavier waters, deeply immersed... Read more
Published on 30 April 2002 by greggodwin

2.0 out of 5 stars Failed Enlightenment
I am surprised how well this book has been reviewed thus far, so I'll add a counterpoint...

Dharma Bums soars in points, but these are very few and far between. Read more
Published on 27 Nov 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars Like "on the road", but different, perhaps even better
If you found "On The Road" left you desperate for more of kerouac's energetic prose, then this is perhaps the best next step. Read more
Published on 13 Jun 2001

4.0 out of 5 stars Another 'Beat' Classic
I was impressed with 'Dharma Bums', but would still recommend 'On The Road' to anyone who hasn't read Kerouac before. Read more
Published on 26 April 2001 by Iain A Donaldson

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