Jack Kerouac - 'The Dharma Bums'

I read this book even though I had no intention of doing so. It was sitting at my girlfriend's apartment. I'd just finished reading Italo Calvino's munchkin sized yarn Marcovaldo and needed something new. I started reading and just couldn't stop. The only other book I've read by Kerouac was On The Road, and that one is truly a masterpiece. To cover so much ground, the descriptions of so many settings in one narrative is quite impressive, and even though its primary focus on drugs and woman are certainly more appealing to an adolescent andhertz, they'd probably still resonate with a slightly older / still not fully matured andhertz. So maybe that's why I haven't read anything else by Kerouac, because I knew I would like it even though I didn't want to. Oh well. Pigeonholes be damned. I flew through this thing and found some great segments for Literary Chicago along the way. 

"That's Rhonda, my sister, I grew up with her in the woods in Oregon. She's gonna marry this rich jerk from Chicago, a real square."

"Japhy and I were sitting around in the shack in a drowsy afternoon and suddenly she was in the door, slim and blond and pretty, with her well-dressed Chicago fiance, a very handsome man."

And of course, a lovely little thesis statement toward the end of the book:

"Trails are like that: you're floating along in a Shakespearean Arden paradise and expect to see nymphs and fluteboys, then suddenly you're struggling in a hot broiling sun of hell in dust and nettles and poison oak...just like life."

Not to mention:

"I'd also bought milk and we had just steak and milk, a great protein feast, squatting there in the sand as highway cars zipped by our little red fire." Was Jack Kerouac the original Charlie Kelly?

Guess I shouldn't be so resistant to what I like. No, I didn't learn a lot about Buddhism, but I did learn a lot about Kerouac's Buddhism. This would have been a great book to read in high school. Speaking of, does every generation's adult literature turn into the next generations' YA? Is it because every generation is smarter than the last? (are they?) Or are they just antiquated ideas that the younger generations should learn at a younger age so as to eschew them in favor of new modes of thinking? IE, learn history young so as not to repeat...or also repeat if you want, because [deleted] knows how many people read On The Road and took that to heart. And took it the whole world and not just across the continental. 

Anyway, coffee rambles. Read what you like, but don't be afraid to step outside the boundaries. Even your favorite authors can't always deliver that Shakespearean Arden paradise. And sometimes your reading list should be disturbed with the occasional break in the trail...just like life.