Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I remember never really seeing eye to eye with Kerouac's 'On the Road', it was a book I only managed to drag myself through thanks to a dogged stubbornness. And I still think it's one of the most overhyped novels of the 20th century. This however was a slightly more positive kettle of fish. Actually, forget the fish, going by what's mostly eaten here it's more like salami, cheese, and crackers.

I have to say not all of The Dharma Bums went down well with me, but I still quite liked it anyhow, especially when the narrator Ray Smith (a fictional Kerouac) takes in the stunning scenery, and there's plenty of that. From Oregon, California and South Carolina, to Texas and briefly Mexico, he simply doesn't keep still. At times the narrative had me all fidgety, where I felt like getting up and going for a walk in the woods, not that I'm likely to find any in the parisian suburbs, apart from the odd tree here and there. But it's a book that really makes you want to escape the city and the hustle and bustle of life. I wondered whether Chris McCandless took inspiration from Kerouac before going off into the wild.

Smith and his new chum Japhy Ryder, ex- logger, mountain climber, college graduate, Oriental scholar, and seer of visions, are not your average Americans, they would rather go awandering, carefree, and refuse to be consumers of all the stuff that makes everyone else tick. Most of the time they are trying to learn to meditate in Buddhist style, their new goal nothing less than total self-enlightenment, the satori of the Zen masters of Japan and China. Smith concentrates hard on attaining self-enlightenment. He meditates daily in all weathers behind his mother's house during a winter visit and with persistence keeps at his self- imposed discipline in the wilds of the Sierra Madres, in hobo jungles, beside train tracks, and, finally, on the mountaintop fire lookout Desolation Peak.

In his often vivid descriptions of nature one is aware of an exhilarating power that seems to run through his body, and again when he creates the atmosphere of lively gatherings for drinking, talking, and horsing around in the simple but stylized dwellings of his Pacific Coast friends: there are rough wooden shacks in the forest, and sagging old houses on side streets. Here when the entire cast of characters do appear in the one place we are presented with that refreshing blend of naivety and sophistication that seems to be this author's forte. And for a book generally about withdrawal and solitude it was rather quite lively and full of zest.