IN MANY WAYS, THIS 1958 book is better than the earlier On the Road. Kerouac’s signature stream-of-consciousness narrative style is more flowy, and the novel’s lionized centerperson (poet Gary Snyder, or “Japhy Ryder” as tDB calls him) a more noble character than OtR’s Neal Cassady — pardon me, “Dean Moriarty.” The Buddhism as portrayed is sympathetically casual without being didactic, which I suppose is also true of Buddhism itself. The book opens up in Los Angeles, where Kerouac (ahem, “Ray Smith”) is trying to “get the hell out of Dodge…” Continue reading “First Graf: The Dharma Bums”