The Dharma Bums: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Jack Kerouac

May 1971 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature

First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans--mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer--whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.

Ratings and reviews

If you are one that cant sit still and loves to wander and live on the fringe of society then this book is for you. I love his stories and am often swept away in visions of his exploits. I keep this book handy when I need to daydream.

The file is buggy.... This review is not about the book (which is brilliant). No, the issue I’m writing about is that the ePub file itself is buggy in places... on some pages I cannot highlight text, while on other pages I can. Also, sometimes I highlight but the highlights don’t appear until I close the app and reopen. I have determined that this is not an app issue, as other books work fine (and even some SECTIONS in this book). I’m hoping the publisher will see this review and address, only they can fix this. Great book, though, definitely read it!

.. .St. Theresa will garland us w/ flowers...even the Hlnayana coward

About the author

Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.