The Dharma Bums

Name: The Dharma Bums
Brand: Penguin Random House
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Author: Jack Kerouac
ISBN: 9780593165270

Author: Jack Kerouac

Narrator: Ethan Hawke

Unabridged: 7 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 02/04/2020

Categories: Fiction, Religious, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature

“In [On the Road] Kerouac’s heroes were sensation seekers; now they are seekers after truth . . . the novel often attains a beautiful dignity.”—Chicago Tribune

First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac’s most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans—mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer—whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco’s Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.

About The Author

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on April 23, 2011

That's a completely nostalgic four stars of course. Has there been a writer whose reputation has plummeted quite so much between the 70s and now as jolly Jack and his tales of merry misogynism? But like Bob Dylan says While riding on a train goin’ west I fell asleep for to take my rest I dreamed a drea......more

Goodreads review by Jim on October 19, 2022

[Revised, pictures and shelves added 10/19/22] Published in 1958, this book is a fascinating preview of the 1960s. Like On the Road, it is based on Kerouac's adventures in the late 1940s and early 1950s as he and his buddies helped create the counterculture. They migrated cross-country between bases......more

Goodreads review by Gabrielle on September 10, 2019

I was super into Kerouac in college – which I supposed is the time in one’s life where you are supposed to be into Kerouac. Re-reading “On the Road” in my thirties might not have been my best idea, because it served only to show me how drastically my perspective on things had changed in a decade, an......more

Goodreads review by Leile on April 06, 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......more

Goodreads review by Michael on August 23, 2018

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums: "Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara." Kerouac gives us the rambling master......more

Quotes

"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