The Dharma Bums
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The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Two ebullient young men are 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, a lesson that has a hard time surviving their forays into the pagan groves of San Francisco's Bohemia with its marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, experiments in yabyum, and similar nonascetic pastimes. This autobiographical novel appeared just a year after the author's explosive On the Road put the Beat generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the bestseller lists. The same expansiveness, humor, and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novel ignites this one. The novel is based on Kerouac's experiences during the mid-1950s while living in California, after he'd become interested in Buddhism's spiritual mode of understanding. One of the book's main characters, Japhy Ryder, is based on the real poet Gary Snyder, who was a close friend and whose interest in Buddhism influenced Kerouac. This book is a must-read for any serious Kerouac fan.
"In [On the Road] Kerouac's heroes were sensation seekers; now they are seekers after truth. . the novel often attains a beautiful dignity, and builds towards a moving climax."
--The Chicago Tribune
"In his often brilliant descriptions of nature one is aware of exhilarating power and originality . . . the entire cast of characters is presented with that not unrefreshing blend of naivete and sophistication that seems to be this author's forte."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Full of sparkling descritions of landscape and weather, light falling through trees, the smell of snow, the motion of animals . . . Jack Kerouac is a writer who cannot be charged with dullness."
--The Atlantic
--The Chicago Tribune
"In his often brilliant descriptions of nature one is aware of exhilarating power and originality . . . the entire cast of characters is presented with that not unrefreshing blend of naivete and sophistication that seems to be this author's forte."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Full of sparkling descritions of landscape and weather, light falling through trees, the smell of snow, the motion of animals . . . Jack Kerouac is a writer who cannot be charged with dullness."
--The Atlantic
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780140042528 |
| ISBN 10 | 0140042520 |
| Title | The Dharma Bums |
| Author | Jack Kerouac |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Pearson Education Limited |
| Year published | 1971-05-27 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |