The Dharma Bums

Well, that brings us to the devolution from these optimistic mid-century spiritual movements straight into a cynical, fortified, and fractured late century California.

Let's contrast Jack Kerouac's 1958 book, The Dharma Bums, with two absolute heavyweights from Joan Didion.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem from 1968, and Play It As It Lays from 1970.

This is where the Californian dream gets a severe unsparing reality check.

Number one, uh, doesn't it get lonely up here? Number two, what do you do? Number three, how did you get a job like this? And number four, when are you leaving?

They're interesting questions, and they're the types of questions, after all, that have become the center of so much fire tower lore, like in Jack Kerouac's novel, The Dharma Bums.

The book ends with a protagonist working as a lookout on Desolation Peak, searching for truth.

He writes about meditating one night outside the tower.

Now, of course, this version deals with Buddhism, but originally the song didn't actually deal with Buddhism.

Bowie's interest in Buddhism kind of began in his early teenagers, particularly inspired by Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums and the book Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, which will, you know, eventually inspire a song title on Earthling.

The song was recorded in December 1966, but by the time the album came out in the summer of '67, that was kind of the height of Bowie's interest in actually becoming a monk.

However, while he was meditating, he w- kept getting this, you know, calling to, that he should pursue music and not actually pursue being a monk.

It turned out Jack wasn't very good at being in the wilderness and had to flee down the mountain and find the nearest bar.

But Gary is fondly remembered in The Dharma Bums, Kerouac's wonderful book, where Gary Snyder becomes the character Jaffe Ryder.

So all you that are interested in some prose-based supplement to our class on poetry can find yourself as a copy of Dharma Bums in the coming weeks and months and enjoy that fictional portrait of Gary Snyder.

And he went to the Asian Art Museum when it was called that in Volunteer Park in Seattle, and he saw all these scroll paintings.

Because of the objections of my early publishers, I was not allowed to use the same personae names in each work.

On the Road, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums, Dr. Sax, Maggie Cassidy, Tristessa, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody, and the others, including this book, Big Sur, are just chapters in the whole work, which I call the Deluse Legend.

My old age, I intend to collect all my work and reinsert my pantheon of uniform names, leave the long shelf full of books there, and die happy.

The whole thing forms one enormous comedy, seen through the eyes of poor Tai Jin, me, otherwise known as Jack Deluse.

It was a mystery that called out to me continuously as I grew up there through the movies of George Lucas, the music of The Grateful Dead.

And as I got older, you know, through Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac and later on in my 30s through the lectures of Alan Watts and so on and so on.

Marin just kept calling to me, asking me to solve this mystery of And I gathered various experiences, writing, doing interviews throughout my travels and my adulthood.

And eventually I was prepared to take on the responsibility of trying to solve that mystery.

He was trying to find a soul to this country that he couldn't find.

And he was using his own Catholicism, which wasn't quite enough, so he sort of transitioned into Buddhism, which is something Gary Snyder, who's another beat poet, got him into, and Kerouac wrote Dharma Bums.

What's it called? Dharma Bums.

Now, here we go.

Well, Phil, you've got to explain these things.

That's Buddhist truth.

Yes, yes.

The Dharma Bums.

Because of the objections of my early publishers, I was not allowed to use the same personae names in each work.

On the Road, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums, Dr. Sax, Maggie Cassidy, Tristessa, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody, and the others, including this book, Big Sur, are just chapters in the whole work, which I call the Deleuze Legend.

My old age, I intend to collect all my work and reinsert my pantheon of uniform names, leave the long shelf full of books there, and die happy.

The whole thing forms one enormous comedy, seen through the eyes of poor Ty Gene, me, otherwise known as Jack Deleuze.

Rumpled shirt.

Hair is muss- He's got a s- cigarette, got the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and he's got the Jack Kerouac books, On the Road and Dharma Bums.

Can you see that all?

I can see that.