Goodreads | The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Jack Kerouac

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¿Verdad o ficción?	1	6	12/28/2007 10:04PM

Leile rated it:

(review of isbn 0140042520)

04/06/07

Read in March, 2007

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 a...more 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.
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Daniel rated it:

(review of isbn 0140042520)

06/25/07

So we unpacked our packs and laid things out and smoked and had a good time. Now the mountains were getting that pink tinge, I mean the rocks, they were just solid rock covered with the atoms of dust accumulated there since beginningless time. In fact I was afraid of those jagged monstrosities all around and over our heads.

'They're so silent!' I said.

'Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sitting there bein perfectly p...more So we unpacked our packs and laid things out and smoked and had a good time. Now the mountains were getting that pink tinge, I mean the rocks, they were just solid rock covered with the atoms of dust accumulated there since beginningless time. In fact I was afraid of those jagged monstrosities all around and over our heads.

'They're so silent!' I said.

'Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sitting there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waiting for us to stop all our frettin and foolin.' Japhy got out the tea, Chinese tea, and sprinkled some in a tin pot, and had the fire going meanwhile, a small one to begin with, the sun was still on us, and stuck a long stick tight down under a few big rocks and made himself something to hang the teapot on and pretty soon the water was boiling and he poured it out steaming into the tin pot and we had cups of tea with our tin cups. I myself'd gotten the water from the stream, which was cold and pure like snow and the crystal-lidded eyes of heaven. Therefore, the tea was by far the most pure and thirstquenching tea I ever drank in all my life, it made you want to drink more and more, it actually quenched your thirst and of course it swam around hot in your belly.

'Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea,' said Japhy. 'Remember that book I told you about the first sip is joy the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.'

'Just about old buddy.'

The rock we were camped against was a marvel. It was thirty feet high and thirty feet at base, a perfect square almost, and twisted trees arched over it u and peeked down on us. From the base it went outward, forming a concave, so if rain came we'd be partially covered. 'How did this immense sonumbitch ever get here?'

'It probably was left here by the retreating glacier. See over there that field of snow?'

'Yeah.'

'That's the glacier what's left of it. Either that or this rock tumbled here from inconceivable prehistoric mountains we can't understand, or maybe it just landed here when the friggin mountain range itself burst out of the ground in the Jurassic upheaval. Ray when you're up here you're not sittin in a Berkeley tea room. This is the beginning and the end of the world right here. Look at all those patient Buddhas lookin at us saying nothing.' ...less

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