The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The book is the follow-up to what is widely considered his best novel, On the Road. The semi-fictional accounts in the novel are based upon events that occurred years after On the Road. The main character is purportedly a fictionalized Gary Snyder who appears as Japhy Ryder. Also important in the narration is Kerouac's account of the Six Gallery Reading, where Allen Ginsberg debuted a reading of his 1956 poem Howl and other authors such as Kenneth Rexroth and Philip Whalen performed. A key of Kerouac's aliases for his friends is helpful in deciphering the rest of the characters.

The story largely follows the action of Japhy Ryder, whose penchant for the simple life and Zen Buddhism influenced Kerouac highly as he began to mature and on the eve of his wild and unpredicted success with On the Road. The action shifts between the wild, such as three-day long parties and a supposed reenactment of the Buddhist sexual right of the "Yab-Yum" ceremony to the sublime and peaceful imagery where Kerouac seeks a type of transcendence. The conclusion of the novel is a change in narrative style, with Kerouac working alone as a fire lookout on Hozomeen Mountain's Desolation Peak, in the North Cascades National Park (see also Desolation Angels ). In this period Kerouac was pushed to a fragile psychological state because of the aloneness and the absence of alcohol, which was already becoming a substance that Kerouac was dependant upon. These elements place The Dharma Bums at a critical junction between what would be the consciousness-probing works of many authors in the 1960's such as Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey.

References

• 1958. The Dharma Bums, ISBN 0140042520

The Dharma Bums is also the name of a band from Portland, Oregon.