Will I love The Dharma Bums?

“The little flowers grew everywhere around the rocks, and no one had asked them to grow, or me to grow.” The joy in Kerouac is stumbling along with his absent-minded musings and finding the stretches of poetry that really speak to you. Dharma Bums is spiritual and inward-focused, but the characters spend time in nature, trying to figure out their place in it. It’s the kind of companion that you want to have with you on a canoe trip or sharing space with you on a hammock on a warm fall day. 

Though Jack’s most well-known work is On The Road, for me The Dharma Bums best illustrates and illuminates Kerouac’s intimate relationship with the transformative nature of travel. Horizons beckon. How he reaches them is every bit as meaningful as what he finds when he gets there. The descriptions are vivid, the writing style organic and original, and the experiences unforgettable.