Rating: 
Summary: You haven't lived 'til you've read Dharma Bums
Review: This is the most amazing peice of literature I have ever
set eyes on -- a life changer. Please, read this book, you'll feel the same way.
Rating: 
Summary: Sing 'Hoo' for Purity!
Review: DHARMA BUMS is Sal the next morning. The screaming mad party, heaven-reached and bottle-drained, rests in peace and the sun is here. Time to reassess. Time to repent. That is how this book reached me. Read on the heels of ON THE ROAD, BUMS is the next logical step in that journey. He still enjoys a party, still makes love to wine, but instead of ending in wild sweats, it approaches nirvana. He abstains from women, communes with the mountains, and is definitely on his way to shedding his skin of the world. His cohort this time around is not Dean, but right good Bhikku, Japhy. Together they hike the trails of Buddhahood.I enjoyed this book, but felt disconnected from the main character, the way a designated driver feels removed from the drunken group. He is on a path, to which I cannot wholly relate. The inner monologue passages are not as user-friendly due to their Buddhist nature (or "Buddha Nature") as those in ROAD. However, it is still a very engaging read that ends, like ROAD, in a euphoric afterglow. Desolation Peak is the new Mexico. Fog replaces bums, and silence, the exhausted laughter of done mad men.
Rating:
Summary: awesome book!
Review: this was the first jack kerouac book I read and I absolutly loved it! It was extremly well written.
Rating: 
Summary: Well...
Review: I've read "On The Road" three times over the last six years. It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece. Having said that I decided to get "Dharma Bums" and I did not care for most of the book as I am not into Buddha and zen. Only once in a while a glimmer of the fun of "On The Road" seeped in, but not enough. I also did not like the supporting characters as I did in "On The Road." This book was pushed by many people as Kerouac's second best. I found it to be uninteresting and probably should not pursue any other of his books if this was considered "his second best."
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Summary: The enigma of life
Review: This is yet another compelling novel by Jack Kerouac, but unlike his more famous semi-autiobiographical novel "On The Road", this one captures more of Kerouac's spiritual and ascetic side and does so within the context of Buddhist muses and the more worldy aspects of existence. In On The Road, Kerouac (or Sal) is a youthful wanderer seeking experience by hitchhiking across the U.S. and stopping to explore the wilderness of various cities. In Dharma Bums the wilderness he explores is the desolate mountains of California. At the beginning he sets ouf with his friend Japhy, and some other climber named Morley, to take on the precarious task of hiking a mountain called Matterhorn, and later Ray spends almost two months in solitude as a fire lookout on a mountain he calls "Desolation." While at times I became peeved at Kerouac's (or Ray's) somewhat childish Buddhist ramblings, I began to realize that it was this unfettered exuberance with life that is utterly lacking in the seriousness of our business oriented society with its somber goal to mechanize human life. We hear very little of Neal Cassady (Cody in this book), who was the maniacal force that hurled On The Road along, with the exception of the scene in which Ray watches Cody's girlfriend Rosie who later commits suicide the morning after Ray tells her, in response to her paranoid rambling, "But you're getting these silly convictions and conceptions out of nowhere, don't you realize all this life is just a dream? Why don't you just relax and enjoy God? God is you, you fool!" Unfortunately I'm not too sure his consolation mitigated her paranoia about reality but you can't blame Ray's sincere attempt to help. The sytle of this novel is less plot and more sensory perceptions, which are captured in Kerouac's magnificant prosaic style. Oh, one more thing. The book opens with Jack hopping out of a freight "somewhere near Camarillo," which is the city I live in. I think that's one of the many reasons why I am drawn to his novels. He lived and experienced America more than most of the American citizens who claim that Kerouac was a dissident while it was his dissidence that really proved how much he loved and felt for the U.S.
Rating: 
Summary: Not my favorite
Review: Read any of Kerouac's books and you can't help but feel what he feels, be infected by his pleasure in everything. Although this book was as good technically as his others, I could get no pleasure from this. I found it to be more a chore than a joy, only because Zen has never been my thing, nor haikus. This book is full of everything Kerouac is, but those who aren't like-minded will probably not like it. If you like Kerouac's style and exuberant prose, but are not of his views, "Maggie Cassidey" is a better choice. You don't get pure Kerouac, but you get a tatse. Before you spend your money, decide if you're a true Kerouac fan, someone who thinks you have to read him and emulate him to be hip, or someone looking for a good read. "On the Road" should be required reading for everybody, though.
Rating:
Summary: A very refreshing read
Review: I really enjoyed this book. Kerouac drew me into a magical world of his creation. Filled with memorable characters, this book is an uncommonly delightful easy-read that makes a cover to cover read very tempting. As often happens to me when I read a good book, I was sad the book had ended, and eager to read more Kerouac (I think I'll try "on the road next.) This is definitely a book I find worthy of owning as I feel I will be drawn to it over and over again.
Rating:
Summary: changed my life
Review: This book absolutely changed my life--had to get my car repaired one day, picked it up on a whim--read the whole thing in one sitting at a mechanics shop drinking coffee swill--they all thought I was crazy because and let out guffaws of disbelief every now and then and have to get up and walk out the door and pace, lost in thought---Everybody I've ever met who's read Keruoac read "On The Road" first--that IS NOT the book you read first by Kerouac--"Dharma Bums" IS--Why? Dharma Bums style is much more straightforward and concise--whereas "on the road" is much more rambling in nature--you get bored with it sometimes--Dharma Bums travels along at a good clip and is Jack at his most life-celebratory--Kerouac is in this big mess of a life just like everybody else and he knows it--realizes that everybody "steps to their own drummer" and doesn't hold that against anyone--he was concerned with freedom and living life (at least in his early life)--he isn't trying to be a guru--he just tells it like he sees it--and, almost in spite of himself, what he sees is this slice of the beautifully rich infinity that surrounds us
Rating:
Summary: Milk and Cookie Samara
Review: Kerouac has often been forced into a narrow paradigm in which to work. The casual reader delights in reading about Kerouac and Snyder climbing the Matterhorn; the same holds true for Teh Kerouac/ Cassady relationship in On the Road. Still I think that the underlying truths of this book, which lie dormant to the casual reader, greatly outshine the aciton.
Kerouac's prose aims to draw the reader away from the worldly cycle of Work-Consume-Work-Consume and so on. He aims to show us a different path, one for the people who meditate and defy social convention, not simply for the sake of defiance, but for the sake of self-enlightenment.
The long-haired, tea smoking, judge killing, terrorist supporting outsiders of today, so villified by the present and past governments, find in Kerouac much overlooked philosophy a separate peace, one away from the wired up fast paced world of dead technology. When Kerouac goes on his long beautiful tangents about children singing a ditty of their own imagination, it's like being eight years old again and having ice cream and cookies in the kitchen and laughing about the nonsense that happened at school that day. Kerouac reminds us that we do not live in a world enclosed by the suggested rule of society, that we are each our own to create and experience what we will for ourselves.
TTFN
Dr. Gonzo
Rating:
Summary: Were we ever really this innocent?
Review: When I reread this book after so many years I found myself wondering if we were ever really like this. The innocence, the lack of pretention, the sincerity - it is so totally alien from what this society has become. Sure Jack Kerouac had his problems with booze and relationships, but at his core there was somehow this absolutely blinding glare of innocent purity. Here was a man whose primary concerns were always the meaning of life, the nature of god, the suffering of innocents, whether he was boozing it up in a bar, hopping a freight, or hold up in a look-out cabin on top of a mountain. Jack Kerouac was a true poet in a world were poetry was in abysmal decline both before and after. Jack Kerouac's life was a spontaneous living poem- the dionysian poem of the living holy fool. This is my favorite of all Kerouac's novels. I've had people comment about how I must have patterned a huge part of my early life on this book. I remember thinking so too, except all my wandering and wondering took place before I even heard of Jack or his books....
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