The Dharma Bums-Jack is back!

ive been reading the Dharma Bums for a while now, it took a while to get into it, Id start hten have to put it down and then be awhile fore got back to it, but ive been totally wrapped up in the language and vision...I read On The Road and it just didnt click with me( great story, but not as much impact) the way he writes makes me swel with emotion and thought and I just wanna run out and GO somewhere, see everytthing once..and forget everything elsew, job money girlfriend everything!
Im about halfway thru now and was just wonderin if it hit anybody else in the same way???
last night I read the part about the mountain climb with their meditating in the cold night and seeing Japhy running straight down the mountain side in great leaps and being overcome at his realization that you cant fall off a mountain you fool........and then couldnt sleep all night my mind was clear an going a hundred miles a minute!
what about the rest of you???

 

i always have a hard time getting into jack kerouac. i read on the road, the dharma bums, and the subterranians (think i spelled that wrong).they're all good books, you just have to get used to his writing style, i guess. it's not really the typical beginning middle end stuff.the books always leave me feeling kinda boring, like damn, how come i'm never that excited about anything...but then again, i'm not loaded, like he was, that probably had something to do with it.

 

I read the Dharma Bums ages ago. I was studying Zen at the time so it seemed appropriate. Totally agree with you about it being a great book.


TTFN

Sage

 

.......Nuff Said.......






P.S. He wasn't "loaded" as you put it nightmarehippygirl ,most of the time he just made enough to Get by.

 

i got about halfway through this book, when i got really busy and ended up not finishing it. i was really enjoying it though, and do plan on making to the end eventually. the only other book of his i've read is "on the road", which did not impress me at all.

 

time to move on to poet-shaman gary snyder...

 

the often discussed novel "On The Road" is but one of the many novels produced by Jack Kerouac. Following this initial success, Kerouac went on to publish other novels. In 1958-one year after On The Road-Kerouac published The Dharma Bums, an account of Kerouac's life in the Pacific Coast and his spiritual journeys in Buddhism. I'm nearing the end, and thus far have been impressed with kerouac's style and talent. Who else has read it? What did you think of it?

 

Would you suggest reading it?

 

I love "Dharma Bums", it is so mellow and its focus on eastern philosophy with a mix of Beat is something no one else but Kerouac could pull off. My favorite chapter is the one where Ray, Japhy Ryder and Morley climb Matterhorn... jumping from boulder to boulder... this was one of Jack's best, his initial interest in Zen Buddhism, still on the road, still questioning life. Great, great book! "To the children and the innocent it's all the time"

 

"Dharma Bums" is brilliant - one of my favourite Kerouac books. I particularly like the part where Japhy talks about a "rucksack revolution", which predicts the hippies several years before the Summer of Love. Anyone who enjoys this book might want to look up "Desolation Blues", the poems he wrote while up on the mountain, and "Desolation Angels", which picks up where "Dharma Bums" leaves off and tells you what happens when he goes down into the world, becomes famous through the publication of "On The Road", etc. etc.

 

I really liked the Dharma bums, more so that OTR in fact. So many beautiful passages.

 

i think dharma bums is my favorite kerouac book. i really grew more of an appreciation for buddhism in the mountains... those things i love to be around. definitely an inspiring book.

 

i would have to say my fav part was later in the book when

he was going into a deep conversation with him self in front of the frige, then broke it off saying "the cat meowed, i fed her"

if you like jack, i would also sugjest you read some Allan Watts

 

& if you want to read some of "japhy ryder's" musings & poetry, check out gary snyder... (the real-life model for "japhy", just as neal cassidy is the model for "sal moriarity")(the books can be read as ummmmm "visions of the great rememberer"(saith alan gindburg), a cluster of reminiscences about coming of age in the land of the GI bill and post-WWII america, with the names changing from book to book...)


~

the beats' comment on snyder:

we always used to talk about pulling up stakes & going to the orient to actually study buddhism under a master; but gary snyder was the one of our group who actually did it...


(and gary snyder is still writing poetry and essays, and working to make gaia a possible place for humans to continue to dwell...)

 

I'm going to have to correct you real quick, the character of Sal Paradise, Kerouac modeled after himself, while Dean Moriarty is after Neal Cassady.

 

Gary has done some great books. But he says Japhy Ryder shouldn't be taken as too accurate a portrait of him: "'The Dharma Bums' is fiction," as he said on tv in 1996.


WHY LOG TRUCK DRIVERS RISE
EARLIER THAN STUDENTS OF ZEN

In the high seat, before-dawn dark,
Polished hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging on Poorman creek.
Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.
- Gary Snyder

 

Great book! I liked it a lot more than "On The Road".

 

It's definitely one of my favorite books, but there's quite a few others that Jackiepoo wrote that I like more: I find Subterraneans, Desolation Angels, Big Sur, On the Road, and Visions of Gerard all to be better than The Dharma Bums.

 

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Absolutely, that book makes me feel soo restless and mundane.... When I need to get inspired to strength my spiritual discipline, I read this book....