THE DHARMA BUMS - Jack Kerouac

Here is a book I finished in September of 1995.

The idea to read this book came from my grade 11 English teacher Mr. Clarke.  He and I had a great relationship, and even though I was smack dab in the middle of a very angry punk-rock fuck-the-world teen-angst phase, I still respected Mr. Clarke and his opinion of me.  I truly believe it was Mr. Clarke who single handedly made me love reading as much as I do today.  Mr. Clarke was old school, and I mean the awesome kind; he wore a tweed jacket every day of the week, smoked a pipe, and drank his coffee black and strong.  He was old, and was the only teacher during that phase I thought had any idea of just what it meant to be cool.  He constantly lent out his books to the students he liked and thank God I was one of them.  I don't think he had any idea just how much I admired him.

Without giving too much away; this book follows Ray Smith, a character based on the real life Kerouac. Like so many of  the books I have already reviewed in this blog, it centers around a perfect duality between two distinct parts of Ray's Life.  There are the outlines of his life as a "Zen lunatic" in the mountains, and this competes with his life as a drunken jazz and poetry fiend in the busy city. I found it to read more like an autobiography after reading a book on Kerouac's life by Ann Charters, who I later discovered is one of the most reputable biographers on the 'Beat' scene as it existed in the 1950's-1960's.  (I will review that book later in this blog for those interested.)  After discovering more and more about Kerouac I was able to see that the beatniks he writes about in this book are all based on his actual friends, many of whom were made famous by the Beat Generation movement.  There isn't much else to say about the plot without giving the dreaded spoiler alert.  If you've taken the time to read this post I am fairly certain you are already familiar with the beat scene and I am not educating you in any way.

All that being said, I recommend this book for those looking to start their journey into the Beat writers.  Even though it was written after some of the trademark Beat books of all time.  Over all it's what you'd expect from a 'Beat' novel; filled with drunken antics, poetry jams (the first time they were cool) a rejection of materialist ideology, and of course riddled with Buddhist / Eastern references.  For those very new to this; Kerouac and others like him were a part of the scene they dubbed the 'Beat Generation', I am uncertain of its origins but it seemed to represent an anti-conformist movement of socially aware zero-hero's who would later tie into the hippy movement. (or perhaps directly morphing into it? - please post comments if you have more information)  It's hard for me to say, having been born in 1977, but because so much time has past I almost see it now as a movement that started out as something very emotionally charged and meaningful, only to become more like the generation that was able to get away with being lazy, drunk and useless. I think the remnants of that scene today are the weird fuckers you see with dirty beards walking downtown Toronto and Hamilton talking to themselves and reeking like B.O.   But, back in the glory days  of the 1950's these writers carved themselves out a niche that I worshiped as a younger man, and I aspired to be a part of their scene, not realizing that it was long dead..  I tried very hard to create this life for myself and my firends without much success. I suppose the 2010-2013 hipster scene is as close as anyone has been able to come in recreating it since, although many smaller pockets have been easily identifiable over the years in this university town I live in.  I see a lot of hipster kids reading Beat novels and drinking coffee in the cafes these days, and there has been a very active poetry-slam movement happening in my town over the past few years.  All still very cool in my opinion, makes me want to call in sick to work and stay out late.  Sadly i think a lot of it is fashion driven and won't last for too much longer.  Mr. Clarke would probably have smiled to hear me say that, and then hit me in the back of the head with a copy of 'Naked Lunch' and told me to get to class.

This book is 244 pages long and it reads very easy, as everything else I have read by Kerouac. I remember quite well that I was able to finish it in 2 days at a small cafe in Port Colborne, Ontario that was on West Street. That cafe is no longer there due to a very real lack of cool kids existing in that town in the early to mid 1990's. On my sliding scale I can easily give this book a valuable 9/10 based on what it did for me as a young impressionable reader. Had it not been for this book I would have never discovered one of the coolest literary movements of all time. Thanks Mr. Clarke...who is sadly probably dead by now.