On the Road
The novel that came just before, in the same voice. The Dharma Bums trades the cross-country car trips for climbing and meditation.
Read our takeThe Dharma Bums
Jack Kerouac
The Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac's follow-up to On the Road trades the highway for mountain trails, and a restless young writer tries to learn Buddhism from a poet who climbs peaks.
- 1958
- 244
- Exuberant
- Atmospheric
- autobiographical
- lyrical
- voice-driven
- episodic
About Jack Kerouac
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe Dharma Bums is Jack Kerouac's novel about two young men looking for the truth, first in San Francisco's poetry parties and then in the mountains.[1] Ray Smith, the narrator, is Kerouac under another name. Japhy Ryder, the poet and climber who teaches him about Zen, is modeled on Gary Snyder.[2][3] Viking Press published it in New York in October 1958, a year after On the Road.[4][5] Kerouac wrote it in eleven days in Orlando, Florida.[5]
The story, in more detail
The novel opens on a freight train. Ray Smith hops a gondola car out of Los Angeles at noon one day in late September 1955 and rides north toward Santa Barbara, lying on his duffel bag and watching the clouds.[6] He travels the way hobos travel, and later in the book he meditates in hobo camps beside the tracks.[7]
Ray's Buddhism is simple and personal. Early on he tells Japhy Ryder that he does not care about the different schools and their names. He is interested in one idea above all: that life is suffering, and that the suffering can be ended.[2] Japhy knows far more than he does, and much of the book is Ray learning from him.
Japhy is a poet, a former logger, a mountain climber and a scholar of Asian religion.[7] He and his friends live in rough wooden shacks and sagging old houses, with straw matting on the floor and orange crates for bookshelves. Japhy has a vision of young Americans who refuse to work just to buy things they do not want. The book calls them a rucksack revolution.[7]
The book moves between two kinds of life. In San Francisco there are long parties, poetry readings and talk that runs all night. In the High Sierra there is climbing, cold, and quiet.[1] Ray keeps trying to hold on to what he learns in the mountains when he comes back down.
The full plot
Ray Smith rides a freight train north out of Los Angeles in late September 1955.[6] In the Bay Area he meets Japhy Ryder, a poet, climber and student of Buddhism, who becomes his great new friend.[7]
Ray and Japhy go climbing in the Sierra and spend nights drinking, talking and reading poems with their friends in San Francisco.[1] Japhy talks about a rucksack revolution of young people who will not work just to consume.[7]
Ray tries to meditate every day. He keeps at it behind his mother's house during a winter visit, in the mountains and in hobo camps beside the railroad tracks.[7]
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Ray takes a summer job as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak, in the Skagit country of Washington State. He hitchhikes north through Seattle, which looks exactly the way Japhy described it.
After sixty days alone on the mountain, Ray comes down with his rucksack on his back and heads back into the world of bars and ordinary people. He believes he has had his vision, and that it is his for good.
Themes and analysis
Japhy Ryder and Gary Snyder
Kerouac modeled Japhy Ryder on his friend the poet Gary Snyder, according to the Poetry Foundation. Snyder was born in San Francisco and grew up on small farms in Washington State and Oregon. He became an expert mountain climber. He was drawn early to Asian art and thought, and he urged his friends to take up Eastern philosophy.
The other characters are real people too, under changed names. The Library of America describes thinly veiled portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and the poet Kenneth Rexroth. Sarah F. Haynes, who spent about a hundred hours with Kerouac's diaries at the New York Public Library, notes that Snyder kept advising Kerouac by mail after he left to study Zen in Japan.
The novel opens in late September 1955. The reading at San Francisco's Six Gallery took place the same autumn, in October 1955. The Poetry Foundation dates the start of the Beat writers' fame to that reading.
A Buddhist novel by a Catholic
Kerouac grew up Catholic in Lowell, Massachusetts. He started reading about Buddhism in earnest in December 1953, while staying with Neal Cassady in California. He checked books out of the San Jose public library. The Dharma Bums draws on the years 1955 to 1957, near the end of what is usually called his Buddhist period.
Nancy Wilson Ross reviewed the book for The New York Times in October 1958. She saw how far it had moved from On the Road. The characters were no longer moving just for the sake of moving. They were trying to sit still and meditate. She liked the short, plain lines that read like Japanese poems. She liked less the passages that sound like stiff translations of scripture.
Ross's warmest praise went to the food and the trails. She wrote that Kerouac could describe a supper of pea soup and wild mushrooms so that it made the reader hungry. She thought he was at his best on the smells and sounds of walking a Western trail.
Sixty-three days on Desolation Peak
The last part of the novel happens on a mountain in Washington State. In the summer of 1956 Kerouac spent sixty-three days as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak, in the Mount Baker National Forest. The U.S. Forest Service paid him $230 a month. He hoped the solitude would help his writing, away from people, drugs and alcohol.
He hitchhiked north from the San Francisco Bay Area, through Seattle, to the ranger station at Marblemount. The novel describes the trip, including the ferry into Seattle and the valleys of the Skagit River under the snow mountains. After a week of firefighting training he crossed Ross Lake by boat. A ranger and a packer then took him the last six miles on horseback.
The real summer was less happy than the book. A ranger later remembered that Kerouac switched off the lookout's radio so he could write. He seems to have written only one letter to his mother, some haiku and his journal. He came back to the same summer in a later novel, Desolation Angels.
Eleven days in Orlando
Kerouac wrote the novel over eleven days in 1957. He was living with his mother in College Park, a neighborhood of Orlando, Florida, in an apartment the writer Bob Kealing describes as a converted back porch. Like On the Road, the first draft was typed on one long roll of teletype paper.
In January 1958 a Time magazine photographer, Fred DeWitt, photographed Kerouac copying the scroll onto ordinary sheets. DeWitt later remembered a single light bulb, the roll of paper and a manual typewriter. The scroll was sold at Christie's in April 2003 to a buyer whose name was not made public.
A later typescript shows Kerouac arguing with his publisher. A Viking Press editor marked it up in blue. Kerouac answered in red, and on the first page he wrote that these were Viking's changes that he rejected. The typescript was lent to the Olin Library at Rollins College for a time and is no longer held there.
Les Clochards célestes in Paris
None of the novel takes place in France. Its Paris link is its French edition. Gallimard published it in Paris in 1963 as Les Clochards célestes, which means roughly "the heavenly tramps". Marc Saporta translated it. In English the novel is still in print as a Penguin Classic.
Kerouac went to Paris in June 1965 to look for his family's roots. The trip became his novel Satori in Paris.
Quotes from The Dharma Bums
Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.
I warned him at once I didn't give a goddamn about the mythology and all the names and national flavors of Buddhism
my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom.
Why we recommend it
On the Road, but in the mountains
The same voice and the same restless friends, but Ray Smith is trying to sit still. Nancy Wilson Ross saw the change at once in 1958.
A portrait of Gary Snyder
Japhy Ryder is modeled on the poet Gary Snyder, a climber who urged his friends toward Eastern philosophy. The novel shows him climbing, writing poems and teaching Ray.
The outdoor writing
Climbing in the Sierra, the ferry into Seattle, a summer alone on a fire lookout. The New York Times singled out Kerouac's writing about trails and weather.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Ray Smith
The narrator, a broke young writer who reads Buddhist books, rides freight trains and tries to learn to meditate. Kerouac's stand-in.
Japhy Ryder
A poet, mountain climber, former logger and student of Zen who teaches Ray what he knows. Modeled on Gary Snyder.
Bring it to book club
- Ray tells Japhy he does not care about the names and schools of Buddhism. What does he want from it instead?
- Japhy's rucksack revolution sounded radical in 1958. Does it still?
- The novel swings between wild parties and silence in the mountains. Which life does Ray seem to belong to?
- How is Ray changed when he comes down from Desolation Peak?
- Kerouac turned his friends into characters under new names. What does that let him do that a memoir would not?
Timeline
December 1953
Kerouac begins reading seriously about Buddhism while staying with Neal Cassady in California.
September 1955
The novel opens, with Ray Smith riding a freight train north out of Los Angeles.
October 1955
The Six Gallery reading in San Francisco, which the Poetry Foundation names as the start of the Beat writers' fame.
Summer 1956
Kerouac spends sixty-three days as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak, Washington State. The summer becomes the novel's last part.
1957
Kerouac writes the novel in eleven days in College Park, Orlando, Florida, on a roll of teletype paper.
January 1958
Fred DeWitt photographs Kerouac for Time magazine as he retypes the scroll.
October 1958
Viking Press publishes The Dharma Bums in New York. Nancy Wilson Ross reviews it in The New York Times on 5 October.
1963
Gallimard publishes the French translation in Paris, Les Clochards célestes, translated by Marc Saporta.
April 2003
The original scroll is sold at Christie's to an anonymous buyer.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Viking Press
- 1958
Paperback
- Paperback
- Gallimard
- 1963
- Marc Saporta
- Paperback
- Penguin Books
- 1971
- 9780140042528
- Paperback
- Penguin Classics
- 2006
- 9780143039600
Audiobook
- Audiobook
- 2020
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Subterraneans
Also published in 1958, and also set among San Francisco's bohemians, but about a love affair instead of a spiritual search.
Read our takeBig Sur
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Big Sur
Kerouac goes back to the California woods four years later, famous and drinking hard, and the solitude that helped Ray Smith no longer works.
Read our takeSatori in Paris
Jack Kerouac
Satori in Paris
The Buddhist word satori comes back in 1966, when Kerouac looks for a sudden awakening in Paris and Brittany.
Read our takeThe Dharma Bums: frequently asked questions
What is The Dharma Bums about?
Two young friends looking for the truth through Zen Buddhism, poetry and mountain climbing. Ray Smith, the narrator, learns from the poet Japhy Ryder in San Francisco and the Sierra. The book ends with Ray's summer alone as a fire lookout in Washington State.
Who is Japhy Ryder based on?
The poet Gary Snyder. The Poetry Foundation says Kerouac modeled the character on him. Snyder was a climber, a former logger and a student of Zen, like Japhy.
Is The Dharma Bums a true story?
Mostly, under changed names. Ray Smith is Kerouac, and the book draws on his life from 1955 to 1957. The Library of America notes portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Kenneth Rexroth.
When and where did Kerouac write The Dharma Bums?
In 1957, over eleven days, in his mother's apartment in College Park, Orlando, Florida. He typed the first draft on a roll of teletype paper, as he had done with On the Road. Viking Press published it in October 1958.
What is Desolation Peak?
A mountain in the Mount Baker National Forest, in northern Washington State, with a fire lookout at the top. Kerouac worked there for sixty-three days in the summer of 1956. The summer is the last part of The Dharma Bums, and he wrote about it again in Desolation Angels.
Is The Dharma Bums a sequel to On the Road?
Loosely. The Dharma Bums came out a year after On the Road, and the Rollins College archives call it a sequel. The friends are different, though, and the narrator has a new name, Ray Smith instead of Sal Paradise.
What is The Dharma Bums called in French?
Les Clochards célestes, roughly "the heavenly tramps". Gallimard published Marc Saporta's translation in Paris in 1963.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Dharma Bums, its publication, and its place in literary history.
3↑Gary Snyder
WebsitePoetry FoundationUsed forBiography of Gary Snyder: Japhy Ryder was modeled on him, and the Six Gallery reading of October 1955.
4↑The Dharma Bums — Library of Congress catalog record for the Viking Press first edition (LCCN 58011734)
ArchiveLibrary of Congress, 1958Used forLibrary of Congress record for the Viking Press first edition: New York, 1958, 244 pages.
8The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics, 2006, ISBN 9780143039600)
WebsitePenguin Random House, 2006Used forPublisher's record for the Penguin Classics edition, ISBN 9780143039600.
9Jack Kerouac: Road Novels 1957–1960 (edited by Douglas Brinkley)
WebsiteLibrary of AmericaUsed forLibrary of America's description of the novel and its portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Kenneth Rexroth.
10Author Jack Kerouac spends 63 days as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the summer of 1956 (Essay 8034)
WebsiteHistoryLink.org, 2006Used forDavid Wilma's HistoryLink essay on the summer of 1956 on Desolation Peak, quoting the novel with page numbers.
11Les Clochards célestes, translated by Marc Saporta (Paris: Gallimard, 1963) — catalogue record
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de France, 1963Used forBibliothèque nationale de France record for the first French edition, Paris, 1963.
12Jack Kerouac's Breton ancestry and Satori in Paris
PeriodicalPenguin BooksUsed forDate of Kerouac's June 1965 arrival in Paris.
13The Dharma Bums
NovelJack Kerouac, 1958Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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