Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 6th September 2007
Paperback
Published: 15th August 2018
Hardback
Published: 28th September 2020
The Dharma Bums
By (Author) Jack Kerouac
Introduction by Ann Douglas
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
15th August 2018
2nd August 2018
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Classic fiction: general and literary
813.54
Paperback
224
Width 111mm, Height 182mm, Spine 13mm
132g
Jack Kerouac's classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature, now in A-format THE DHARMA BUMS appeared just one year after the author's explosive ON THE ROAD had put the Beat Generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the best-seller list. The same expansiveness, humour and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novels sparks this one too, but through a more cohesive story. The books follow two young men engaged in a passionate search for dharma or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen way, which takes them climbing into the high sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. Educated by Jesuit brothers in Lowell, he decided to become a writer at age seventeen and developed his own writing style, which he called 'spontaneous prose'. He used this technique to record the life of the American 'traveler' and the experiences of the Beat Generation, most memorably in On the Road and also in The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums. His other works include Big Sur, Desolation Angels, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Gerard, Tristessa, and a book of poetry called Mexico City Blues. Jack Kerouac died in 1969.