Yo tomé este libro para un viaje por Escandinavia yendo solo con mi mochila, y lo hice siguiendo la recomendación de un amigo que ya lo llevó para un Interrail por Europa. Definitivamente, te engancha, y mucho. Cada vez que tienes un rato esperando en una estación, no puedes evitar seguir leyéndolo. Es un claro ejemplo de la "generación bit", y como es de esperar los protagonistas están todos muy locos; pero precisamente por eso te metes más en tu propio viaje, porque ellos siempre están buscando "fondos" de donde pueden para seguir moviéndose de un lugar a otro. Tus 12 horas de tren son nada en comparación con sus miles de millas y sigues pensando que todavía te queda mucho carrete para seguir viajando a donde haga falta.

Evidentemente, puedes leerlo igualmente por las tardes en el salón de tu casa, o en la cama antes de acostarte, y seguirá siendo un libro magnífico. Pero merece ser leído "en situación".
Mi comentario es algo parcial, pues yo lo veo como compañero de viaje, básicamente. Pero es una gran obra, icono de una época y de una generación que acabó muy mal: aunque los nombres sean ficticios, se trata de Jack Keoruak y de sus experiencias, hechos reales.

Mi consejo: léelo, en casa, o de viaje. Un gran libro.

This book is among the first to finally piece together a coherent path in Kerouac studies. Jones's book thoroughly delves into Kerouac's Proustian-like epic approach to the Duluoz legend. It is so refreshing to emerge with fresh ideas apropos Kerouac's technique verses the over zealous biographers and cultural blow-hards who pipe in regularly on the Beats. Much of Kerouac's real life had little to do with Beat ethos, and much more with that of the writer. What the author provides is much more than a run-down of the authobiographical mystique that Kerouac injected into his work, but moreso, the complexity of a narrative that turned American literature on its end. This book deserves much more attention and suffices itself as the most import and vital accomplishment in Kerouac studies to date. It will far outlive much of what has been written about one of America''s most misunderstood novelists.

Visit 12th annual Lowell Celebrates Jack..always first weekend in Oct...JK's hometown..many notable authors & multi-media coverage.....all Beat!

Dorfner...born in Catskills,NY--rode bike, packed his Rucksak, & went-On The Road*...a truly Beatified...hip beat. Make annual Lowell,(MA) Celebrates J Kerouac, 3 days in early Oct....

Books like this are why cameras were invented.

From the mid-50's to 1960 Carole Reiff took her Rolleiflex into the studios, Jazz clubs, concert halls, dressing rooms, and all-night jam sessions of the great ones. She captured the artists of this period better than any other photographer. There is nothing posed or formal about most of these these shots- the spontineity leaps out at you. These artists were totally at ease like the camera wasn't even there. There is no distracting text to get in your way either- the pictures say far more than any words could. You just get page after page of legends before, during, and after the act of creating their art. It is incredible how many of the greats she had access to: Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday (best shots I've ever seen of Lady Day), Lester Young, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Gil Evans, Sarah Vaughan, Ornette Coleman, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Bill Evans, Percy Heath, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, and so many others. Put on a record and get this book out. It is like they live again- or like you are at a big jam session in the sky.

Of yes, and the introductory essay by Jack Kerouac, The Beginning of Bop, is exactly right to set the mood. It is one long flowing riff of prose poem by a man who understood the spirit of the age better than any other.

For any true fans of Jack Kerouac, this book marks the end of a semi-productive career for this writer. Several years after On The Road, Big Sur provides a dark and twisted reflection of the more jovial and adventurous atmosphere to On The Road. The Duluoz Legend was never so grim, nor so sober as in this installation to the saga that was Jack Kerouac. People from Kerouac's daily life make candid appearances throughout the book through characterized aliases. Ferlinghetti appears as Montrose, yet the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco is mentioned the same as in real life. In this story, Kerouac comes to terms with himself, and what his life has really meant over the past years. Through the advice of friends, and by a drunken depression, Jack Duluoz(Kerouac) appears as the truly tragic figure he was near the end of his life in St. Petersburg, FL. I feel it safe to say that in this instance, art truly imitates life. I recommend this book to anyone, mostly to those who've read On The Road, and more specifically to those who have become influenced through the writings of this 20th Century legend.

It has been about seven years since I have read this book, but it remains my favorite book by my favorite author of novels. The reason I give this review is because I am about to embark on a critical analysis of it for class. I hope that I come out of this sea of emotion with my breath still even!

Out of all of his books this one portrays the crux of Kerouac's life dilemma. If one wants to read unbridled travel narrative, then s/he should go to "On the Road". If one wants to capture all the splendor of the youthful Beat mysticism at its prime, then "Dharma Bums" is likely the best bet. For sheer emotiveness, however, "Big Sur" is possibly without parallel in American literature.

There is one scene that overflows with passion and entreaty to the cosmos. He is involved in a tortuous love affair as he attempts to get off of alcohol. All of this yearning and pathos piles into his psyche and all his mind can do is scream. I don't know about all of the rest of us, but this is a way that I have felt in my life. I am glad there is a novelist like Kerouac who succeeded in publicizing the essential anguish of the American tradition.

If anyone wants to correspond with me on the matter of this book and others by him, please do so. Fresh and contemporary voices will add immeasurable breadth and meaning to my research project. Good day!

For those of you have read "On the Road" this book will not compare. In Big Sur Jack Kerouac is no longer a free-spirited youth in search of the Beat "Ideals" of freedom and life lived for the moment. Instead Kerouac finds himself lost in a generation that he began but no longer understands nor do they understand him. It is clear in the writing in this book that Kerouac is bordering on insanity. He is ravished by alcohol and is able to bring you into his mind so vividly that you cannot help but feel apart of him.

Although extremely gritty and dark at times the book also has some beautiful passages where Kerouac simply describes his surroundings that nearly left me in tears. The writing conveys thought and feeling that I have experienced before.

After reading this I truely feeling that is book is part of who I am, never has a book effected my outlook on life and the world we live in.

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love." (1 John 4:18)

Life is not sanitized and easy. Kerouac knew this from hard-bitten experience. The amazing thing about Jack was that when it was over, he could always sing about it in his books. he does so here in "Maggie Cassidy."

I have felt the kind of stuff Jack talks about in this book. The illusion of teen "love" is one of the most wretched feelings in all the world...its elation is too high...too painful. Its ending is wrenching of the soul...usually quickly followed by the joy of illusory freedom. Still, it sticks your head for years after like an annoying song that won't go away--Keroauc gets all this down in one hundred and ninety-four pages...amazing.

Get this book. I recommend it highly to all who've been stung by what they thought was love when they were young.

Jack Kerouac, writer of many a romantic tale; stories set out wst on roads hitchhiking, listening to jazz till 4 a.m., and just living by the moment, but not this one. Although it is written in his similar romantic run-on sentenced style that captivates any lover od literature, it's a story about his teen years back home. Most of it revolving around his love with his girl Maggie Cassidy. Being a teenager you see connections and dumb teenage stereotypes, that are sad but true. Stories of drunken New Years with the boys, tales of the track and football team, and mostly that story of love, the "world revolves around us" love.
"The wild windows of other houses and Saturday night parties shining the spilling molen hot gold of real life." This quote was from Jack's 18th birthday party, where his whole world (family and friends) were all dancing, mingling, and basically having a great time. This quote describes some of the amazing weekends we have as high school kids, where the fun seems to keep coming at ya.
Stories of high school parties, buddies, girls, drama, and love are all packed into 194 pages; every page telling a new adventure. Whether it be Jack's short life as a prep school student on a football scholarship, or his first generation French-American parents, or even just his nights with the boys. Anyone who is or has been enrolled in high school and been involved in the complicated life of a teenager would love this book, so basically everyone. There's a chapter for everone and Kerouac's characters all have original and meaningful personalities. When you read it old friends from your town will be remembered, the dialogue and actions of the city kids of the 30's will take you back to the guys and gals you hung out with on weekends.

The reason this book is so captivating is due to the style in which it is written. Jack Kerouac describes his surroundings so perfectly. Bittersweet memories of a first love in the 1930's, surrounded by red brick buildings and the scent of his mothers home cooked meals. Cold Lowell nights and fond memories of running track in high school. The descriptive style of the book made me wish that I had been around in the thirties, in a time that is so fondly remembered by our fathers and grandfathers, 'Maggie Cassidy' is a book that anyone can read.

'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.

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!

I read Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums & I must say I liked it very much! The story is about two young men as they set out in search of truth. They are Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder (Jack Kerouac & Gary Snyder). These two meet up in San Francisco, California at Berkeley. They attend a bohemian party and poetry jamming (The Gallery Six Reading). This was the beat generation of the 50s & 60s.

Japhy Ryder liked reading Zen books such as Diamond Sutra and also works by D.T.Suzuki. He was seeking his Bodhisattvas in everyone he met. Japhy would often quote Buddha: ("All life is suffering".)

Their goal was to climb Desolation Peak. The solitude was their Satori. Dharma Bums is a great story of adventurer. I also recommend On The Road by Jack Kerouac as well.

i've heard this book compared to the Dharma Bums by a number of people, but i don't like that comparisson. The entire mood and circumstances of this novel are quite different. Certainly The Subterraneans is an interesting and necessary read for Kerouac fans, but certainly not a book i would recommend to readers just getting into Kerouac. The book is perhaps a bit too realistic, too depressing and self depreciating, without the hopeful philosophic spirit of his most popular works. It contains a lot of passages that just make you cringe, and some awkward archaic language when talking about Mardou. But there is still a bit of transcendental magic hidden in this book. Kerouac's strength really lies in his ability to open up those small moments of every day, the existential dread and desire is always there, we are always trying to make ourselves in every moment. Here we find it all taking its toll hard on him.
It is definitely a quick read, however, and of course Kerouac's less than great books are still better than so many other books out there. I'd recommend taking it out of a library or getting it used, though.
It is a snapshot of three days in the life of Leo Percepied (Kerouac) and perhaps its greatest value lies in its demystification of beat culture. Kerouac isn't finding buddha here, he's finding his inadequacies. "this is the story of an unself-confident man"(page 1).

The Subterraneans is an autobigraphical novel based on a summer love affair between Kerouac and a young black woman in New York City in 1953. The setting of the story was moved to San Francisco at the behest of the publisher.

The book tells the story of the love, and its end, between Leo Percepied, the Kerouac character, and Mardou Fox. Mardou is half Cherokee and half black. She has grown up in poverty in Oakland and has suffered serious emotional breakdowns. She has gone from lover to lover among the Bohemia of San Fransisco until she meets up with Leo.

The book shows some of Kerouac's understanding of his own character. He describes himself (page 1) as both an "unself-confident man" and as an "egomaniac". A few pages later (page 3) he confesses that "I am crudely malely sexual and cannot help myself and have lecherous and so on propensities as almost all my male readers no doubt are the same."

The Subterraneans are a group of hipsters, aspiring artists, drop-outs, con men who inhabit that bars and streets of San Fransiscon graphically described in this book. The book is full of mean streets, cold water flats, alleys, run-down stores, cheap bars, late evenings, pushcarts, and sad mornings.

Leo is initally sexually attracted to Mardou. When he learns and listens to her he truly falls in love. She is indeed a lovable character. The picture of the love is convincing. Unfortunately Leo/Kerouac remained throughout his life a mother's boy. Mardou tells him, properly and sensibly "Leo, I don't think it good for you to live with your mother always" (p47) Leo nonetheless can't part from his mother. He also has doubts about his ability to commit to a black woman, particularly given the prejudice of his mother and sister. He dumps Mardou. It is his loss.

The book is written in long stringy sentences to imitate the "bop" improvisatory style of jazz riffs. I was put of by the style when I began the book but came away concluding it fit the subject matter. The apparent spontaneity and the sincerity of the narrative move the story along.

The book describes well the American hipster of the 1950s. It is ultimately a story of the need for love and the difficulty of commitment. It is a sad story and I think in the emphasis on the wildness of Bohemia can easily be misunderstood. Kerouac may have been somewhat wiser as a writer than he was as a man. He was able to take his inability to form a lasting relationship with a woman and describe it. He turned his experiences and personal difficulties into a poignant and lasting novel. Art in Kerouac as in so many writers becomes a way of understanding and transcending one's life.

This is an amazing book. Not only does it have a facinating plot and realistic characters, (mainly due to the fact they're based on real people), the writing style is a powerful lucid force that suits the content down to the ground. The rushing prose create a momentum that carries the story and portrays the frenzied reality of Kerouac in love. Jealousy and disillusionment are key to this story and you can observe how the heavy drinking Leo, the author and main character, and Mardou, his black, mental unstable girlfriends' relationship evolves. This is certainly not a book to be missed and its short too. It limits its scope to the events of a short period with the story unravelling through accounts of specific episodes that allow the characters to develop. The best book I have ever read is this slim tome and I urge you to read it - a love story with anguish and a unique writing style.

By way of providing a balance to Kirkus' rather grouchy review of Kerouac's "Book of the Dharma":

Kerouac's being unable definitively to seperate Buddhism from Hinduism and Taoism is hardly his fault. Early Hinduism is the religion which lies behind Buddhism, and all Vedic faiths. Tibetan Buddhism adopted and adapted Mongol imagery and concepts, and Sino-Japanese Buddhism is infused with Taoism and Confucianism. As for its connection with Catholicism, this is the religion Kerouac was brought up in, and which he struggled to reconcile with Buddhism for many years. It left him, perhaps with an overexaggerated sense of the first Noble Truth: "All life is suffering". The Buddhist text that Kerouac first encountered, Dwight Goddard's "A Buddhist Bible," is an eclectic collection of scripture drawn from all of these Buddhist traditions.

Christ claimed a path to redemption from suffering - so did Buddha - room for comparison at least?

Attacking Kerouac for his alcoholism is rather below the belt - can't a drunk be religious? Can he not aspire above his own weakness? Anxious and neurotic this text may be, even interminably confused, but then so is John Bunyan's "Confessions": at least it's vexedness indicates Kerouac's engagement with serious metaphysical questions.

Even so, one for die hard fans, I should imagine. B.Moderate.

Some of the Dharma, a maze of journal entries, prayers, thoughts, meditations set in a typeset facsimile of the original manuscript by the author is so vast and informed, it is hard to key in on the text with just a perusory glance in time for the hasty review written anonymously by Kirkus.What it does is reveal Kerouac for the wandering soul he truly was. He was set apart from the writers of his time (other than his fellow Beat writers),so that his Buddhist texts were rejected in 1950's America.They are every bit as profound, mystical, and holy as those who practice Buddhism on a lifetime basis. Kerouac was an experimenter in his prose, his life, and his faith. That all religions tie into one Universal belief succintly displays Kerouac's objective in this book. It develops Kerouac's vast grasp of intellect in ways that On the Road doesn't. That is the true heart and gem of this book

What is so unusual and valuable about this book is that it represents a prolonged experiment in inventing fresh ways to express metaphysical ideas in English prose and poetry. Most philosophers are poor prose stylists and most prose stylists steer clear of weighty metaphysics. But in this book we find a passionate, inventive prose stylist deeply engaged with pondering such topics as the One and the Many, substance and the composite nature of objects, time and space, the relation of thought and perception to reality, the nature of desire and happiness, mortality and immortality. He approaches these topics through a starting point in Buddhism but going wherever his mind takes him. The book contains many gems of expression as Kerouac pours his ponderings into his strange, striking prose. To criticize this book because Kerouac's scholarship is weak is to miss its point.