The Dharma Bums - Definition and Overview

The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. Considered his follow-up to what is widely considered his best novel, On the Road. In reality, the events that the semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon occurred years after the events of On the Road. The main character is purportedly a fictionalized Gary Snyder who appears as Japhy Ryder. Also important in the narration is Kerouac's account of the Six Gallery Reading (http://www.litkicks.com/Places/SixGallery.html), where Allen Ginsberg debuted a reading of his 1956 poem Howl and other authors such as Kenneth Rexroth and Philip Whalen performed. A key (http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/alias.html) of Kerouac's aliases for his friends is helpful in deciphering the rest of the characters.

The story largely follows the action of Japhy Ryder, whose penchant for the simple life and Zen Buddhism influenced Kerouac highly as he began to mature and on the eve of his wild and unpredicted success with On the Road. The action shifts between the wild, such as three-day long parties and a supposed reenactment of the Buddhist sexual right of the "Yab-Yum" ceremony to the sublime and peaceful imagery where Kerouac seeks a type of transcendence. The conclusion of the novel is a change in narrative style, with Kerouac alone working atop Desolation Mountain in Washington State watching for forest fires. In this period Kerouac was pushed to a fragile psychological state because of the aloneness and the absence of alcohol, which was already becoming a substance that Kerouac was dependant upon. These elements place The Dharma Bums at a critical junction between what would be the consciousness-probing works of many authors in the 1960's such as Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. The Dharma Bums was also the name of a band from Portland, Oregon.

References and external links

• The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac, ISBN 0140042520