The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after the events of On the Road. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who was instrumental in Kerouac's introduction toBuddhism in the mid-1950s. The book largely concerns duality in Kerouac's life and ideals, examining the relationship that the outdoors, bicycling, mountaineering, hiking and hitchhiking through the West had with his "city life" of jazz clubs, poetry readings, and drunken parties.
Contents[]
Plot summary[edit][]
Ray Smith's story is driven by Japhy, whose penchant for the simple life and Zen Buddhism greatly influenced Kerouac on the eve of the sudden and unpredicted success of On the Road. The action shifts between the events of Smith and Ryder's "city life," such as three-day parties and enactments of the Buddhist "Yab-Yum" rituals, to the sublime and peaceful imagery where Kerouac seeks a type of transcendence. The novel concludes with a change in narrative style, with Kerouac working alone as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak (adjacent to Hozomeen Mountain), in what would soon be declared North Cascades National Park (see also Desolation Angels). These elements place The Dharma Bums at a critical junction foreshadowing the consciousness-probing works of several authors in the 1960s such as Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey.[citation needed]
One episode in the book features Smith, Ryder and Henry Morley (based on real-life friend John Montgomery) climbing Matterhorn Peak in California. It tells the story of Kerouac's first introduction to this type of mountaineering and would serve as inspiration for him to spend the following summer as a fire lookout for the United States Forest Service on Desolation Peak inWashington. The novel also gives an account of the legendary 1955 Six Gallery reading, where Allen Ginsberg gave a debut presentation of his poem "Howl" (changed to "Wail" in the book), and other authors such as Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, and Philip Whalen performed.
Character Key[edit][]
Kerouac often based his fictional characters on friends and family.[1][2]
"Because of the objections of my early publishers I was not allowed to use the same personae names in each work."
—Jack Kerouac [3]{| class="wikitable" style="margin-right:0px;border-color:rgb(170,170,170);color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;" !Real-life person !Character name |- |Jack Kerouac |Ray Smith |- |Gary Snyder |Japhy Ryder |- |Allen Ginsberg |Alvah Goldbook |- |Neal Cassady |Cody Pomeray |- |Philip Whalen |Warren Coughlin |- |Locke McCorkle |Sean Monahan |- |John Montgomery |Henry Morley |- |Philip Lamantia |Francis DaPavia |- |Michael McClure |Ike O'Shay |- |Peter Orlovsky |George |- |Kenneth Rexroth |Rheinhold Cacoethes |- |Alan Watts |Arthur Whane |- |Caroline Kerouac |Nin |- |Carolyn Cassady |Evelyn |- |Claude Dalenberg |Bud Diefendorf |- |Natalie Jackson |Rosie Buchanan |}
Reception[edit][]
Some reviewers criticized Dharma Bums for being spiritually crude and lacking seriousness. Ruth Fuller Sasaki found it a good portrait of Snyder, but thought Kerouac knew nothing about Buddhism. She wrote to Snyder, "His Buddhism is the most garbled and mistaken I have read in many a day ... I think everyone grants Kerouac's sensitivity of reaction and his ability to vividly write those reactions. I found the first mountain climbing episode quite exciting. But as a novelist he shows no talent whatsoever and no imagination."[4] Alan Watts discounted it as "Beat Zen": "a shade too self-conscious, too subjective, and too strident to have the flavor of Zen."[5]
Snyder wrote Kerouac, "Dharma Bums is a beautiful book, & I am amazed & touched that you should say so many nice things about me because that period was for me really a great process of learning from you...." but confided toPhilip Whalen, "I do wish Jack had taken more trouble to smooth out dialogues, etc. Transitions are rather abrupt sometimes."[6] Later, Snyder chided Kerouac for the book's misogynistic interpretation of Buddhism.