Book Review

Book Review

The Dharma Bums

by Jack Kerouac

     When reading The Dharma Bums forget about Jack Kerouac’s biography. Forget his other books. Forget what you know about the Beat Generation. Forget what you know about Buddhism. Most importantly, forget what you know about critical theory, deconstruction, feminism, political correctness or whatever other pseudo-intellectual muck you might have clouding up your brain. Clean out your mind and encounter this novel as it is. Just read it and go with it. It has to be experienced on its own terms.

     The Dharma Bums is primarily Jack Kerouac’s exploration of Buddhism. Ray Smith is the main character and the four strands of the book include accounts of his friendship with Japhy Ryder, his encounters with nature, his travels across the country, and some wild Beat Generation parties. The characterization of Japhy Ryder is both visual and psychological. Their extensive conversations about Buddhism, their mountain climbing, and their wine drinking sessions that lead to silly bouts of spontaneous poetry-making bring this individual to life. Through conversation, Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder intertwine their minds and personalities while remaining distinct in a way that makes both of them easy to understand. It seems as if Kerouac dropped the manic in-the-moment hedonism of Neal Cassady and replaced it with the imminent transcendence and lofty contemplation of the guru Gary Snyder, the real life poet who Japhy Ryder represents.

     When Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder take an experienced mountaineer up to the peak of Matterhorn, we get some of Kerouac’s best prose stylization. The natural atmospherics of the mountain range are sharply described and vivid; you can feel the height of the pine trees, the shade of the forest canopy, and the refreshment of cold stream-water as they pour it over their sweating heads and let it flow down their thirsty throats. You can feel Ray Smith’s straining muscles and the resistance of gravity as he hikes and climbs. His hunger makes your stomach rumble. All this is described in a free flowing prose that is rhythmic, airy, light, and spontaneous. It literally sounds like music when read out loud and in fact the musical flow and beat is so strong you could, at times, even imagine dancing to it.

Another great section about nature is when Smith visits his family in North Carolina and spends copious amounts of time meditating in the woods while surrounded by dogs. He describes the grove as a temple and meditates under a pine tree the way the Buddha Siddharta Gautama found enlightenment under the Bo Tree. In his inward journey he contemplates the true nature of existence. His thoughts are abstract but not impossible to understand. In terms of Buddhism, this is probably not very original but he articulates them well and in the end his sense of peace and well-being are sincere without sounding like flakey, new age pretentiousness. His return to the world outside his head is not glorious, though; his family treats him like an idiot because he deviates from the well-trodden path of mainstream America full of dull people who do little more than work and watch tv, the mid-century equivalents of the nobodies today who do little more than lay on a couch, playing with their cell phones.

     Then back in California there are the parties. The friends of Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder stay up all night with bonfires, jugs of wine, guitar playing, people dancing naked, and couples sneaking off to make love in the woods. This Dionysian revelry predates the California hippy scene by almost ten years and Japhy Ryder makes an accurate prediction about a future youth movement where people celebrate life and return to nature rather than falling for the never-ending drudgery of work and boredom that was so popular in the 1950s. Even his prediction of a rucksack revolution where pilgrims roam the Earth in search of knowledge and experience foresees the world-traveler backpacking movement that has been going on since the 1990s. But Ray Smith, ever the loner, feels uncomfortable at these parties and spends a lot of time cooking for the guests, sitting silently by the fire, and wandering off along to look at the stars.

     In between all this are the passages about traveling around America. Ray Smith rides buses, hitchhikes, and jumps on freight trains like a bum to get from coast to coast. He meets a cross-section of truck drivers, hobos, and various other people while expressing fascination and admiration for almost all of them.

     Ray Smith is such a great guy. He loves the world and he loves life. He seeks for genuine truth and believes deeply in kindness and goodwill towards all human beings. He wants to bless everybody with generosity and enlightenment. His kindheartedness brings out the best in everyone he meets and his fascination for other people is both naive and charming. Underlying all this goodness, though, is a sadness, a dark shadow, because of all the suffering and unhappiness of the human race. While Kerouac does not explicitly bring out this subtle gloom, it can be felt in so many lines of The Dharma Bums.

     This novel may be the closest Jack Kerouac ever came to perfection. The sections are well organized and distinct from each other while flowing smoothly from one passage to another. His sentences are a little more controlled than usual and his thoughts, even when rambling, are clear, clean, and accessible. While The Dharma Bums has a gentle and contemplative tone, it is also energetic and vivacious. In our age when America is steeped in hopelessness, anger, injustice, and hate this is a great pieces of literature to turn to for renewal. In our day, it does not seem dated and in fact, the thoughts and actions of Ray Smith seem more relevant than ever. 

Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. Signet Books, New York: 1959.