Rating: 
Summary: kerouac's best
Review: This is the book that lured me into the world of kerouac. I had previously read "On the Road," which was excellent, but I feel no match for "the Dharma Bums." This book changed my life. It changed the way that i thought. Kerouac introduces the reader to his experiences and beliefs through his novels; they are mostly semi-autobiographical. Before this novel consumed me, i had no notion of Buddhism. In retrospect this has been the single most influential thing that I have been exposed to. This book is just a starting point for a Kerouac fan. I recommend that you follow this book with Kerouac's "Desolation Angels." Simple, and yet so satisfying literature. I have not really encountered any other writers who are so beloved, so beautiful and poetic in few and simple jazz talk and random amusing European literary name dropping. Pick this one up, maybe it will change your life too!
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Summary: King of Beat plays on your escapist side once again
Review: Better than 'On The Road' (not putting it down). This is a truly amazing book. If you are hesitating about buying it, I assure you it will be money very well spent. You can't help but love this guy; he possesses the most beautifully innocent, intelligent, honest mind. Pack your bag and head for the hills. Read all of his books.
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Summary: as inspiring as on the road
Review: there isn't much i can say about the book, like _on the road_ you almost have to read it yourself. but it is inspiring--it moves you, opens you. it leaves me speechless.
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Summary: Head to the woods!!!
Review: I had to read this book for a political theory class in college, and it is really a great book for mostly anyone. If you're looking for a serious plot or storyline, you wont find it in this book. What you will find, is a well written narrative of a period of American history that is forgotten to many. Its a book that will leave a peacefull feeling with you, and will also make you think about whats really important in life. Kerouac makes you want to pack up and see the country. I read On the Road after this, and actually liked The Dharma Bums better. If you like travel, nature, poetry, or American history, this book is a must read.
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Summary: A light-hearted mix of religious lunacy and zest for nature
Review: 'The Dharma Bums' is a tale of social dropouts in California who search for Buddhist enlightenment and truth (dharma) amid wine, sex, hitchhiking and mountain scenery. It's a good introduction to Kerouac - shorter, lighter and more accessible than On the Road, which is a more epic but also has some monotonous bits. If religious certainties turn you off, you might tire of dharma-bum narrator Ray's Buddhist slogans and the dogmatic Zen views of Japhy, Ray's buddy. But though Kerouac portrays Buddhism as liberating, he also laughs a lot at kooky piety. At some points - like Ray's 'banana sermon' - religion becomes either profound or hilarious, or both. Ray tries to reach nirvana by convincing himself the world's an illusion, which makes it ironic that the best bits in this novel are poetic descriptions of mountains and travel. The final lonely mountain-top vigil - based on Kerouac's experience as a fire lookout, described in Lonesome Traveller - is a tour de force. Kerouac's prose flair allows him to string 10 adjectives in front of a noun, a heinous crime in modern writing fashion, and get away with it. Kerouac balances Ray and Japhy's Buddhist belief that the world is illusory against the earthbound views of world-weary poet Alvah Goldbook, a thinly veiled Allen Ginsberg. Alvah's quest to soak up his surroundings rather than transcend them puts him closer to the philosophy of On the Road, in which the travelling bums reach a jubilant but sad-hearted state of raw appreciation of their phsyical world. Through the Ray-Japhy-Alvah triangle and all the minor characters, 'The Dharma Bums' gives various answers to Kerouac's big question in this and other books: how to lead a free existence in a conformist careerist consumerist society. Fifty years later, the question's got more vital. Youthful rebellion and boheme are just marketing motifs for soft drinks, CDs and snowboards now, but Kerouac shows you it's possible to be authentically free - if you have the guts.
Rating: 
Summary: Flat Kerouac
Review: I'm amazed at how many people find the Dharma Bums worth reading. It's Kerouac at his flattest. The sentences lack his usual energy and lyrical beauty, there is virtually no action and the Buddhist philosophy feels pasted on and contrived. This is definitely not a Kerouac book to recommend. Readers would to better to pick up a copy of Desolation Angels or (excepting the 140 pages of transcribed conversation in the middle) Visions of Cody. If you've already read lots of Kerouac and you want to move on to a modern counterpart, pick up Vincent Czyz's Adrift in a Vanishing City ... lyrical, experimental, hot-house writing that takes a quick-talkin drifter out of his native Kansas as far afield as Berlin, Mexico City and Paris. And through it all, he never loses his vernacular, even when waxin metaphysical. You might also try sliding over to Henry Miller ... not Tropic of Cancer, which is his most popular, but Sexus, which is far better written.
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Summary: Proto-Hippie Masterpiece
Review: In *Dharma Bums* we see the brave, forceful beginnings of the "counter-culture" in America. The "drop-out" lifestyle is presented by Kerouac, its major early prophet, as a quazi-monastic quest to break free of the dullness and predictability of '50s middle class society, choose one's own values and discover a deep conncetion between the self and Nature. A strong analogy is drawn at every opportunity between America's young rebels and the wandering holy men of other cultures who also advocated independence and simple living.
Rating:
Summary: Let It Lure You
Review: This is a free-spirited energetic, descriptive, tale that was written just before the emerging 60s culture began to evolve and gain mainstream attention and followings. Kerouac lived and did what he wanted in this story (and mostly in his life.) His description of Berkeley and the folks he encountered was interesting, and is full of youth, freedom, and the desire to experience. This is a different read than "On The Road," in the way it flows. His train hops up the west coast, jaunt to North Carolina, and the hike with Japhy, can make one ruminate. "Raymond Smith" was searching for some meaning to life in this book. This piece was written by Kerouac when he still had energy and life left in him. I'd like to know a lot more about Gary Snyder, who is the character Japhy Ryder in the book. I believe he's still alive. The Dhamra Bums goes on everyone's shelf, with the Road, after you've read The Road. Let it lure you to the Rucksack Revolution.
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Summary: kerouac at his best
Review: Dharma Bums is quite simply the best Kerouac book I have ever read. I'd advise you not to start out with this as your first Kerouac adventure but read it instead after On the Road. In Dharma Bums Kerouac's piqueresque tendencies mellow adn he shows a much deeper emotional and religious facet which was largely left unexplored in On the Road. Descriptions of places times and events are fantastic - gritty but not burdensome as I thought they were in Visions of Gerard. The book reads well and will calm you to the quick. This book will change your life, soothe your aches, and show a new world, a world of peace and beauty, to you.
Rating:
Summary: jack kerouac/beat enthusiast
Review: A man who named and best described a generation of which he was a key member, this is another high point in his outstanding literary career. Written during the hieght of his loyalty and love for buddha, it set in the years directly before his masterpiece was published. A great book lacking a little substance, tales of drinking and yabyum in berkley with his new hero Japhy Ryder.
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