The Dharma Bums
by:
Jack Kerouac (author)
"The Dharma Bums" appeared just one year after the author's explosive "On The Road" had put the Beat Generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the best-seller list. The same expansiveness, humour and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novels sparks this one too, but through a...
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"The Dharma Bums" appeared just one year after the author's explosive "On The Road" had put the Beat Generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the best-seller list. The same expansiveness, humour and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novels sparks this one too, but through a more cohesive story. The books follow two young men 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.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780141184883 (0141184884)
Publish date: August 3rd 2000
Publisher: Penguin
Pages no: 204
Edition language: English
Category:
Adventure,
Classics,
Novels,
Travel,
Literature,
American,
Religion,
Philosophy,
Contemporary,
Modern,
Buddhism
Series: Duluoz Legend
Another re-read. Still can't get into Kerouac.
At the risk of offending the "Beat Generation", I found this book to be quite a slog.There's lots of talk of Buddhist principles, which is cool; and hitchhiking all over the place, which is also cool. There's free love, and some other naughty stuff. While that sounds like a cool mix, I just found t...
One star because the cover was awesome.
Slap a few rhyming words together vaguely associated with your intended meaning and call it philosophical poetry. That's my problem with some of the beat poets, whom I blame for the crap classic rock songwriters of the 60s and 70s passed off as lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0iuaxvkXv4But I...
Kerouac really doesn't care about plot as much as discussing various ideas with a mediocre amount of depth. In many ways, this is the story of Japhy more than Ray, but the focus on Ray's various moments of "enlightenment" and no real character arcs for either man left me yearning for something to ha...
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