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Nate D's Reviews > The Dharma Bums
The Dharma Bums
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So I only just started this, but just look:
"And who am I?"
"I dunno, maybe you're Goat."
"Goat?"
"Maybe you're Mudface."
"Who's Mudface?"
"Mudface is the mud in your goatface. What would you say if someone was asked the question 'Does a dog have a Buddha nature?' and said 'Woof!'"
Fortunately Kerouac's Proxytagonist du jour acknowledges this as "silly Zen Buddhism", but even so, the koan-lobber is a character being presented as enlightened. Of course, I'm going to see where this is going, but if I have to wade through many more scenes of a bunch of poets calling eachother Bodhisattvas, I'm going be forced to set the book down on the table and look very irritated with it before resuming.
...
And upon finishing: I know that Kerouac is widely considered one of the great poetic seekers of the last century, but I wasn't especially impressed. The prose often felt hurried (I get the feeling that it was hurriedly composed), and some of his autobiographical detail seemed somewhat self-congratulatory with very little more pointed introspection to balance it, but this is probably mostly due to the fact that I'm just not that receptive to his brand of garbled pan-religious philosophizing, and the means through which he tried to explore it.
Even so, I see the appeal. These guys, flawed as their approach may often have been, really were trying to cut right to the core of life, trying to figure it all out. It's noble, even heroic in some ways. And my favorite passages, those conveying the breathless whirl of trains and trucks and towns out on the road, were exhilarating. Huh, I guess that in light of that I really should give On the Road a try at some point.
"And who am I?"
"I dunno, maybe you're Goat."
"Goat?"
"Maybe you're Mudface."
"Who's Mudface?"
"Mudface is the mud in your goatface. What would you say if someone was asked the question 'Does a dog have a Buddha nature?' and said 'Woof!'"
Fortunately Kerouac's Proxytagonist du jour acknowledges this as "silly Zen Buddhism", but even so, the koan-lobber is a character being presented as enlightened. Of course, I'm going to see where this is going, but if I have to wade through many more scenes of a bunch of poets calling eachother Bodhisattvas, I'm going be forced to set the book down on the table and look very irritated with it before resuming.
...
And upon finishing: I know that Kerouac is widely considered one of the great poetic seekers of the last century, but I wasn't especially impressed. The prose often felt hurried (I get the feeling that it was hurriedly composed), and some of his autobiographical detail seemed somewhat self-congratulatory with very little more pointed introspection to balance it, but this is probably mostly due to the fact that I'm just not that receptive to his brand of garbled pan-religious philosophizing, and the means through which he tried to explore it.
Even so, I see the appeal. These guys, flawed as their approach may often have been, really were trying to cut right to the core of life, trying to figure it all out. It's noble, even heroic in some ways. And my favorite passages, those conveying the breathless whirl of trains and trucks and towns out on the road, were exhilarating. Huh, I guess that in light of that I really should give On the Road a try at some point.
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Reading Progress
April 21, 2009
– Shelved
Started Reading
April 23, 2009
–
Finished Reading
July 5, 2011
– Shelved as:
60s-re-de-construction
September 24, 2013
– Shelved as:
50s-realist
February 1, 2016
– Shelved as:
read-in-2009
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message 1:
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Jessica
(new)
Apr 22, 2009 10:35AM
ha ha.
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Yeah, right? Jack Kerouac is not my hero. Naked Lunch is the book to go with from that social clique, but that's not a similar writing style.Hahahha... even a lot of famous writers are wretched sometimes!
I actually picked up a copy of Naked Lunch at the same time. Soon.
Nate wrote: "I actually picked up a copy of Naked Lunch at the same time. Soon."
Oh, Naked lunch all the way...
Thank you for voicing what I could not.
Now I probably won't pick this up to read. Books should be a pleasure not a chore.
Naturally. Though this one is a pleasure to many, apparently. Incidentally, I finally did get around to On the Road, which was absolutely better, but found some of its own ways of annoying me.
if you have ever read the gateless gate the waykerouc presents Buddhism is beautiful. it expresses the torture in himself the search for enlightenment through true experience and the realization that the lowest hobo can be wiser than the most well to do
I felt the same way. Just finished writing my review.
Kerouac and since of the other best writers were very influential with Buddhism in America. These are stories from when he was really on his Buddhist bender. He also developed a writing style called "spontaneous prose, " which is meant to resemble freestyle jazz through words. He felt it was a more honest form of writing, and that rewriting was a form of censorship.
Having a little background might make it more enjoyable.
Sure, but the engagement with Buddhism here is very superficial, and no amount of background would make Kerouac's portrayal of / relationship to his female cast here any less frustrating. I understand why this mattered when it came out (moreso in On the Road) but I'll still take, for all his own problems, Burroughs' free jazz over this any day.
"The prose often felt hurried"What an astoundingly ignorant statement.
Well, see Rachel's comment above. He writes with a quick spontaneous energy, not a deep craft. It's part of his technique and sometimes it works. For me, here, it did not. Though also bear in mind that I read this over a decade ago. What are your thoughts on Kerouac's style, then?
