This is the best
The first time I've reread The Dharma Bums immediately after On The Road and The Subterraneans. It is the best. This is why we read Kerouac. He ventured up north from the eucalyptus ravines of northern California to the country of ancient gnarled mist-shrouded peaks. He ate and slept in Seattle and saw the farms in the Skagit Valley and spent the summer on Desolation Peak and he blessed it all with the peace and enthusiasm and love and enlightenment of a true Bodhisattva.
I wrote the following review back in 2010.
" Rereading the Dharma Bums after probably a ten-year hiatus, I am struck by how foreign the beatniks seem to us today and how that impression must have been magnified tenfold for the Leave It To Beaver folks whom we are told ran the country back in the fifties. Then again Ray, Kerouac's protagonist, hitchhiked back and forth across America and found a surprising degree of tolerance if not admiration from the people stopping to give him a ride. Maybe that's just the nature of people on the move or maybe America wasn't really 100% homogenous like the beats and the flower children who followed them claimed.
It would do "the kids today" good to read this book. I'll wager at least half of them won't get past the poetic language with which Kerouac writes his alleged prose. For the texting generation, Kerouac might as well be Shakespeare. A quick read fails to fully appreciate the music in his words. Slow down and enjoy.
For those willing to embrace this new language, a world governed by thought, belief, emotion, experience, appreciation for nature and attention to basic human needs is unveiled; a world plunked down in the midst of the newborn consumer-driven American society governed by brands, advertising, the lure of "convenience," and the first hesitant salvos of pop culture. Kerouac's characters are as well-versed in Buddhism as the Middle America folks they meet are fluent in Christianity. For an introduction to American Zen Buddhism as it emerged in the beat culture of the fifties and early sixties, read Alan Watt's The Way of Zen and then read The Dharma Bums, looking up and studying every reference to Buddhism you don't understand. It's on my list of things to do, along with hiking to Desolation Peak. If you ever listened to the Doors and didn't understand why Jim Morrison sang "the West is the best," read The Dharma Bums and then Steinbeck's Cannery Row and you'll begin to see, if not agree. It wouldn't have broken my heart if the last half of the book had been devoted to Ray's two months on Desolation Peak instead of just the last ten pages, but his adventures hitch-hiking, sitting in his family's woods, sleeping beneath the stars and eucalyptus trees, and riding the rails on the Midnight Ghost are worth every page devoted to them.
I wrote the following review back in 2010.
" Rereading the Dharma Bums after probably a ten-year hiatus, I am struck by how foreign the beatniks seem to us today and how that impression must have been magnified tenfold for the Leave It To Beaver folks whom we are told ran the country back in the fifties. Then again Ray, Kerouac's protagonist, hitchhiked back and forth across America and found a surprising degree of tolerance if not admiration from the people stopping to give him a ride. Maybe that's just the nature of people on the move or maybe America wasn't really 100% homogenous like the beats and the flower children who followed them claimed.
It would do "the kids today" good to read this book. I'll wager at least half of them won't get past the poetic language with which Kerouac writes his alleged prose. For the texting generation, Kerouac might as well be Shakespeare. A quick read fails to fully appreciate the music in his words. Slow down and enjoy.
For those willing to embrace this new language, a world governed by thought, belief, emotion, experience, appreciation for nature and attention to basic human needs is unveiled; a world plunked down in the midst of the newborn consumer-driven American society governed by brands, advertising, the lure of "convenience," and the first hesitant salvos of pop culture. Kerouac's characters are as well-versed in Buddhism as the Middle America folks they meet are fluent in Christianity. For an introduction to American Zen Buddhism as it emerged in the beat culture of the fifties and early sixties, read Alan Watt's The Way of Zen and then read The Dharma Bums, looking up and studying every reference to Buddhism you don't understand. It's on my list of things to do, along with hiking to Desolation Peak. If you ever listened to the Doors and didn't understand why Jim Morrison sang "the West is the best," read The Dharma Bums and then Steinbeck's Cannery Row and you'll begin to see, if not agree. It wouldn't have broken my heart if the last half of the book had been devoted to Ray's two months on Desolation Peak instead of just the last ten pages, but his adventures hitch-hiking, sitting in his family's woods, sleeping beneath the stars and eucalyptus trees, and riding the rails on the Midnight Ghost are worth every page devoted to them.
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