At the most superficial—and silly—level, I have long felt a connection to Jack Kerouac because we share a birthday; he turned 34 the day I was born. The following year, in 1957, Kerouac’s novel, On the Road, introduced much of the world to the Beat Generation, and maybe because on some cosmic level that mindset was part of the world I came into, I have felt drawn to many of the Beats—Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady, LeRoi Jones (k/k/a Amiri Baraka), and later, previously overlooked, in my opinion, Diane di Prima and Ruth Weiss and other women writers too often in the shadow of the men.

I read On the Road in my first semester of college, when I was taking creative writing for my English requirement. It was the only one of my five classes I liked. I read and wrote prolifically, mostly poetry and some short essays or character sketches, to the detriment of The Challenge of Chemistry, Sociology of the Family, Psychology, and French. I just wanted to read and write. In that way, at the lofty age of 18, I was as self-centered and self-indulgent as the characters in Kerouac’s books, although even then, the characters irked me in ways I could not explain, and the whole premise of these personal quests both intrigued and annoyed me. I only see this now, through the lens of decades of adult responsibility and the acquired knowledge of our human interdependency. I was not as impressed with On the Road as I had expected to be; it seemed aimless. I put Kerouac aside for more than four decades.

I picked The Dharma Bums for a prompt in the 2021 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for a book by a writer who shares my astrological sign. I thought of Kerouac, my birthday twin. Now that I have read The Dharma Bums, I understand that my own love of language and its rhythms and of fluid storytelling draws me to Kerouac now, even if I still find these characters self-indulgent and maybe more than a little self-delusional. But this one was more lyrical, more stream-of-conscious, more fluid. The first sentence grabbed me, set the pace, signaled that this book—unlike On the Road—had a destination. "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." And so I met footloose, meaning-of-life-seeking-through-Buddhism Ray Smith, the narrator. Kerouac’s alter ego. Another American white man privileged to indulge in hedonistic self-discovery. Along the way we recognize other Beats: Gary Snyder in the character of Japhy Ryder, Allen Ginsberg in the character of Alvah Goldberg. I had not realized how autobiographical this story was.

The quest at the center of the novel is not the hero’s quest that is a staple of the Western canon, but rather a personal quest that involves anything but Buddha-like self-indulgences like boozing and drugging and womanizing and misogynistic attitudes. During the time in which the story is set, a personal quest like this, hiking into the mountains, alone or with one or two others, was a uniquely (white) male opportunity and experience. The rest of us, in general, learned by necessity much sooner that the world was not about us, that fulfilling responsibilities left little time for indulging in a self-quest of this type, and that mastering the here and now presents enough of a challenge to make life meaningful. Perhaps this book and the rest of Kerouac’s life can serve as a cautionary tale: failing to moderate one’s ego and base impulses eventually wastes you much sooner than your talents responsibly used—not for what made you feel good but on how you made the person on whom you shine your charity feel—could have taken you. Despite my issue with the theme, I still enjoyed, and at time was mesmerized by, Kerouac’s poetic use of language and its rhythms that was integral to the telling of this tale. At the beginning of the final chapter, I was taken by the images of this moment:

"August finally came in with a blast that shook my house and augured little augusticity. I made raspberry Jell-o the color of rubies in the setting sun. Mad, raging sunsets poured in sea foams of cloud of unimaginable crags, with every rose-tint of a hope beyond ."

I decided to use one of my Audible credits and listen to this as an audiobook. It was compellingly read by Ethan Hawke, which added another dimension to the sound of the language as the story unfolded.
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I think maybe I did finish it? I liked his prose a lot, but didn't like this one as much as "On The Road"

Kerouac tells us about Buddhism, about climbing a mountain with the poet Gary Snyder (“Japhy Ryder” in the book), about hitchhiking and train-hopping across America, about the famous Gallery Six poetry reading, and about the mystical experience of firewatching solo on Desolation Peak. And, of course there's a certain amount of taking your clothes off and partying.

Contrary to all my preconceptions about Kerouac, he turns out to be a very disciplined, focussed writer, and this is an extraordinarily lovely book to read. It can be lyrical, down to earth, or even surprisingly funny. It's of its time and has its faults, naturally: it could use a few more commas, there's an unnecessary amount of misogyny, and some of the Buddhist stuff feels like naive mumbo-jumbo from this distance. The whole ethic of mystical vagrancy only makes sense if you have other people somewhere who are doing the work that makes that lifestyle possible (you can't hop freight trains unless someone is running industries that produce and consume stuff that needs to be transported, after all): it seems like an incredibly selfish, elitist way of finding spiritual fulfilment. But maybe that's taking it all too literally. Kerouac isn't saying that we should all go and live on top of mountains, he's pointing out that engaging with society can be a choice, even if it feels like a forced choice for most of us. ( )

Good, but I'm more of a Gary Snyder fan than a Jack Kerouac fan.

Per Kim Stanley Robinson, the section about climbing the Sierra Matterhorn is some of the best Sierra writing. I agree. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. When one of the characters - I think it was Morley - mentioned Ragusa/Dubrovnik (where I currently am and in some sense from), that was a very enjoyable coincidence. It's always nice to cherish the moments when works of literature affirm little pieces of your existence. ( )