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Lot Essay
A personal spiritual quest and the birth of the San Francisco poetry renaissance
The Dharma Bums, Kerouac’s story of the search for spiritual renewal from nature, was conceived as a sequel to On the Road (1957). It remains one of Kerouac’s most important and widely-read books, written at the peak of his creative powers. In the 61-foot-long, single-spaced scroll, Kerouac captures in prose the rapidly shifting currents of his personal spiritual quest, in order to understand the most fundamental questions of human life, to deal with his increasing loneliness, and to confront his weaknesses—especially his alcoholism—and come to terms with his fear of death itself. The year-long quest takes Kerouac (“Ray Smith” in the novel) across the U.S. and Mexico, along many of the same highways hitchhiked in On the Road. And, with poet Gary Snyder (“Japhy Ryder”) as a guide, Kerouac backpacks into the dense forests and rugged mountains of the California Sierras, seeking the spiritual insights that poets and mystics have often found in nature. Finally, at Snyder’s urging, Kerouac spends a season entirely alone in an isolated fire lookout station on Desolation Peak, high in the Mt. Baker Wilderness.
The Dharma Bums also contains Kerouac's account of what has been called “the central moment in West Coast Beat culture” (R. Solnit, in Beat Culture and the New America 1850-1965, ed. L Phillips, p.73), the now epochal reading in San Francisco, at which poets Kenneth Rexroth (“Reinhold Cacoethes”), Michael McClure (“Ike O'Shay”), Philip Whalen (“Warren Coughlin”), Philip Lamantia (“Francis DePavia”), Alan Ginsberg (“Alvah Goldbook”) and Snyder read their works. The reading at the Gallery Six on Fillmore Street, October 7, 1955, when Ginsberg gave the first public performance of “Howl,” is regarded as marking the creative coalescence of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance.
Demand for another On the Road
The Dharma Bums was written largely because Kerouac’s publishers wanted another book like On the Road, which had attracted national attention, was ringing up strong sales, and made The New York Times bestseller list in late Fall 1957. Viking rejected several of his other manuscripts and urged him to continue what he had done before. Kerouac composed The Dharma Bums quickly, drawing on memory, notebooks, and journals. In a 1957 letter to his agent, he described the new book as a wild, humorous narrative about his discovery of Buddhism, filled with hitchhiking, new characters like Gary Snyder, and scenes from the San Francisco poetry scene. Once again, he wrote the novel in only a few intense weeks, and he believed at times that it surpassed On the Road. By late 1957 and early 1958, he was transcribing the scroll into a clean, conventional manuscript, resisting most editorial changes thanks to his newfound literary fame—despite tension with Viking’s editors.
First thought, best thought
Beginning in late 1953, Kerouac immersed himself in Buddhism, a shift that deeply shaped his writing and self-understanding. He devoured Buddhist texts, finding that the principle of “first thought, best thought” affirmed his spontaneous prose style, and began modeling himself on wandering Buddhist monks—imagining his vocation as awakening others to spiritual truth. He practiced meditation diligently, kept detailed spiritual notes, and found solace in Buddhist ideals of detachment, simplicity, and compassion, all of which aligned with aspects of his own life. In The Dharma Bums, he even describes himself as a modern bhikku dedicated to turning “the wheel of the True Meaning.”
Kerouac ultimately played a small but meaningful role in introducing Buddhism to the American counterculture. Allen Ginsberg later said that Kerouac taught him his earliest—and perhaps deepest—understanding of Buddhism, calling Kerouac a “new Buddha of American prose.” Yet despite the comfort Buddhism offered him, Kerouac struggled to find real connection with others; as Joyce Glassman observed, he could use Buddhism to explain the inner void he felt, but never fully reconcile himself to it.
Gary Snyder
In the late 1940s, Kerouac was deeply shaped by Neal Cassady’s wild charisma—an influence immortalized in On the Road through the character Dean Moriarty. But by 1955, he found a new and very different mentor in poet and outdoorsman Gary Snyder, whose disciplined Buddhist practice, love of wilderness, and scholarly study of Asian languages offered Kerouac a spiritual counterweight to Cassady’s frenetic energy. The two became close companions, sharing poetry, hikes, meditation, and even lovers, forming what biographers describe as the least troubled friendship of Kerouac’s life. In The Dharma Bums, Snyder appears as Japhy Ryder, playing for that novel the guiding, catalytic role Cassady had played in On the Road. While Cassady is reduced to a minor character in The Dharma Bums, Snyder’s upbeat spirituality and reverence for nature become Kerouac’s emotional and philosophical anchor, persisting even after Snyder leaves for Japan. Alone on Desolation Mountain, Kerouac repeatedly recalls Snyder’s presence, revealing how central this friendship had become to his inner life.
Attempting to fill the spiritual void
Kerouac’s climb of Matterhorn Peak with Snyder marks his first real encounter with the wilderness—a world that felt strange, overwhelming, and spiritually charged to an urban Easterner like him. Encouraged by Snyder and hoping to curb his drinking, he seeks clarity in the mountains, discovering the simplicity behind haiku and writing vivid, luminous descriptions of the landscape as he hikes. The beauty of the Sierras stirred both awe and melancholy in him, awakening memories and a sense of “golden eternities,” and inspiring a renewed desire to live more mindfully. Snyder, meanwhile, articulates a countercultural vision of future “rucksack wanderers” who would reject materialism and embrace a life of travel, Zen practice, nature, and poetry.
After the suicide of an acquaintance, Kerouac retreats to North Carolina, where solitary days among the pine woods bring intense spiritual episodes. Yet on returning west, he feels dismissed by Snyder, who doubts that Kerouac can truly pursue enlightenment while still drinking. Kerouac then journeys alone to Desolation Peak to serve as a fire lookout, experiencing both joy and philosophical detachment in the mountain’s profound silence. But the solitude eventually feels hollow—“no characters,” as he puts it—and while the summer restores his health, it does not deliver the transformation he sought. Biographers view this period as a courageous but unsuccessful attempt to fill a deep spiritual void, though The Dharma Bums remains a moving and enduring account of his search for meaning.
Condition
The paper lightly yellowed, cellophane tape used by Kerouac for section joins and for a few early marginal repairs now yellowed, a few later repairs on verso including one near the end of Chapter 22, first inch or so at beginning and end of the scroll very slightly frayed with skillful marginal repairs.
The Dharma Bums, Kerouac’s story of the search for spiritual renewal from nature, was conceived as a sequel to On the Road (1957). It remains one of Kerouac’s most important and widely-read books, written at the peak of his creative powers. In the 61-foot-long, single-spaced scroll, Kerouac captures in prose the rapidly shifting currents of his personal spiritual quest, in order to understand the most fundamental questions of human life, to deal with his increasing loneliness, and to confront his weaknesses—especially his alcoholism—and come to terms with his fear of death itself. The year-long quest takes Kerouac (“Ray Smith” in the novel) across the U.S. and Mexico, along many of the same highways hitchhiked in On the Road. And, with poet Gary Snyder (“Japhy Ryder”) as a guide, Kerouac backpacks into the dense forests and rugged mountains of the California Sierras, seeking the spiritual insights that poets and mystics have often found in nature. Finally, at Snyder’s urging, Kerouac spends a season entirely alone in an isolated fire lookout station on Desolation Peak, high in the Mt. Baker Wilderness.
The Dharma Bums also contains Kerouac's account of what has been called “the central moment in West Coast Beat culture” (R. Solnit, in Beat Culture and the New America 1850-1965, ed. L Phillips, p.73), the now epochal reading in San Francisco, at which poets Kenneth Rexroth (“Reinhold Cacoethes”), Michael McClure (“Ike O'Shay”), Philip Whalen (“Warren Coughlin”), Philip Lamantia (“Francis DePavia”), Alan Ginsberg (“Alvah Goldbook”) and Snyder read their works. The reading at the Gallery Six on Fillmore Street, October 7, 1955, when Ginsberg gave the first public performance of “Howl,” is regarded as marking the creative coalescence of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance.
Demand for another On the Road
The Dharma Bums was written largely because Kerouac’s publishers wanted another book like On the Road, which had attracted national attention, was ringing up strong sales, and made The New York Times bestseller list in late Fall 1957. Viking rejected several of his other manuscripts and urged him to continue what he had done before. Kerouac composed The Dharma Bums quickly, drawing on memory, notebooks, and journals. In a 1957 letter to his agent, he described the new book as a wild, humorous narrative about his discovery of Buddhism, filled with hitchhiking, new characters like Gary Snyder, and scenes from the San Francisco poetry scene. Once again, he wrote the novel in only a few intense weeks, and he believed at times that it surpassed On the Road. By late 1957 and early 1958, he was transcribing the scroll into a clean, conventional manuscript, resisting most editorial changes thanks to his newfound literary fame—despite tension with Viking’s editors.
First thought, best thought
Beginning in late 1953, Kerouac immersed himself in Buddhism, a shift that deeply shaped his writing and self-understanding. He devoured Buddhist texts, finding that the principle of “first thought, best thought” affirmed his spontaneous prose style, and began modeling himself on wandering Buddhist monks—imagining his vocation as awakening others to spiritual truth. He practiced meditation diligently, kept detailed spiritual notes, and found solace in Buddhist ideals of detachment, simplicity, and compassion, all of which aligned with aspects of his own life. In The Dharma Bums, he even describes himself as a modern bhikku dedicated to turning “the wheel of the True Meaning.”
Kerouac ultimately played a small but meaningful role in introducing Buddhism to the American counterculture. Allen Ginsberg later said that Kerouac taught him his earliest—and perhaps deepest—understanding of Buddhism, calling Kerouac a “new Buddha of American prose.” Yet despite the comfort Buddhism offered him, Kerouac struggled to find real connection with others; as Joyce Glassman observed, he could use Buddhism to explain the inner void he felt, but never fully reconcile himself to it.
Gary Snyder
In the late 1940s, Kerouac was deeply shaped by Neal Cassady’s wild charisma—an influence immortalized in On the Road through the character Dean Moriarty. But by 1955, he found a new and very different mentor in poet and outdoorsman Gary Snyder, whose disciplined Buddhist practice, love of wilderness, and scholarly study of Asian languages offered Kerouac a spiritual counterweight to Cassady’s frenetic energy. The two became close companions, sharing poetry, hikes, meditation, and even lovers, forming what biographers describe as the least troubled friendship of Kerouac’s life. In The Dharma Bums, Snyder appears as Japhy Ryder, playing for that novel the guiding, catalytic role Cassady had played in On the Road. While Cassady is reduced to a minor character in The Dharma Bums, Snyder’s upbeat spirituality and reverence for nature become Kerouac’s emotional and philosophical anchor, persisting even after Snyder leaves for Japan. Alone on Desolation Mountain, Kerouac repeatedly recalls Snyder’s presence, revealing how central this friendship had become to his inner life.
Attempting to fill the spiritual void
Kerouac’s climb of Matterhorn Peak with Snyder marks his first real encounter with the wilderness—a world that felt strange, overwhelming, and spiritually charged to an urban Easterner like him. Encouraged by Snyder and hoping to curb his drinking, he seeks clarity in the mountains, discovering the simplicity behind haiku and writing vivid, luminous descriptions of the landscape as he hikes. The beauty of the Sierras stirred both awe and melancholy in him, awakening memories and a sense of “golden eternities,” and inspiring a renewed desire to live more mindfully. Snyder, meanwhile, articulates a countercultural vision of future “rucksack wanderers” who would reject materialism and embrace a life of travel, Zen practice, nature, and poetry.
After the suicide of an acquaintance, Kerouac retreats to North Carolina, where solitary days among the pine woods bring intense spiritual episodes. Yet on returning west, he feels dismissed by Snyder, who doubts that Kerouac can truly pursue enlightenment while still drinking. Kerouac then journeys alone to Desolation Peak to serve as a fire lookout, experiencing both joy and philosophical detachment in the mountain’s profound silence. But the solitude eventually feels hollow—“no characters,” as he puts it—and while the summer restores his health, it does not deliver the transformation he sought. Biographers view this period as a courageous but unsuccessful attempt to fill a deep spiritual void, though The Dharma Bums remains a moving and enduring account of his search for meaning.
Condition
The paper lightly yellowed, cellophane tape used by Kerouac for section joins and for a few early marginal repairs now yellowed, a few later repairs on verso including one near the end of Chapter 22, first inch or so at beginning and end of the scroll very slightly frayed with skillful marginal repairs.