The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) - Softcover

Kerouac, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140042520 ISBN 13: 9780140042528

Publisher: Penguin, 1977

Synopsis

Two ebullient young men search for Truth the Zen way: from marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, and "yabyum" in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude in the high Sierras and a vigil atop Desolation Peak in Washington State. Published just a year after "On the Road" put the Beat Generation on the map, "The Dharma Bums" is sparked by Kerouac's expansiveness, humor, and a contagious zest for life.

About this title

Review:

"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

From the Back Cover:

Ray Smith is a coast-to-coast, freight-hopping poet and drifter, at odds with urban life and middle-class existence (‘all that dumb white machinery in the kitchen’). He meets a kindred spirit in Japhy Rider, a Buddhist drop-out, who enlists Ray into a regime of crazy, purifying hikes up the peaks of the High Sierra and non-stop Zen Free Love Lunacy orgies. ‘Two dissimilar monks on the one path’, their haphazard, often hilarious search for the contentment of ‘dharma’, Buddhism’s all-pervading, supreme principle of life, is pure Kerouac.

'The Dharma Bums'‘ cry for a ‘great rucksack revolution’ in which the country’s youth would cast off the everyday, take to the open road and live the Buddhist way, inspired a whole generation of post-war Americans to search for spiritual knowledge and self-transcendence.

“The Beat Generation now looks quaint to today’s loose freaks who take for granted stances that the rebels of the Fifties only strained toward. But if the Beat lifestyle and attitudes were essentially crude experiments leading to the cultural revolution of the Sixties, it’s still certain that what sparse literature the counter-culture has produced sings nowhere as vibrant, strong and original as in Kerouac.”
ROLLING STONE

“Kerouac’s energy is contagious, his compassion and concern are the genuine homespun article.”
GUARDIAN

Many of Kerouac’s books are available in Flamingo, including 'Big Sur', 'Lonesome Traveler' and 'Vanity of Duluoz'.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1977
• ISBN 10: 0140042520
• ISBN 13: 9780140042528
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256