ORP: Jack Kerouac: 2nd Road Novel

After a hiatus of a year and seven months, I finally got going on the second novel in the collection of Jack's Road Novels. This one is entitled, "The Dharma Bums", and is about further road travels involving a fictional set of characters in search of "truth", in this case "truth" as found in Buddhism.

[For the record, and personally, I think Buddhism may have pieces of truth as God has left Himself a witness in every culture and philosophy on Earth, but Buddhism is not THE TRUTH.]

The style is a relaxed stream-of-consciousness semi-poetic texture of words that describe the rollicking, partying adventures of a handful of characters. Their morals are just what you would expect from the predecessors to the majority of the Baby Boomers, that is sexual immorality, drinking, etc. I overlook this aspect of the story because all I have to do is look around or look at history--it's humanity's proclivity. I like the story though, because there are some poetic moments and I think the stream-of-consciousness technique works because it is not heavy and ponderous like James Joyce's novels or some of Thomas Pynchon's novels. Also I have always been kind of interested in comparative religion so I was looking to see if there were any insights about Buddhism, but alas it's treatment seems superficial. Some of the characters' descriptions show that some of them were sincere, but I got the impression that others were self deluded.

These following passages give you an idea of the style and poetic texture of the story:
This one from a mountain climb:

"Rocks are space," I thought, "and space is an illusion." I had a million thoughts. Japhy had his. I was amazed at the way he meditated with his eyes open. And I was mostly humanly amazed that this tremendous little guy who eagerly studied Oriental poetry and anthropology and ornithology and everything else in the books and was a rough little adventurer of trails and mountains should also suddenly whip out his pitiful beautiful wooden prayerbeads and solemnly pray there, like an oldfashioned saint of the deserts certainly, but so amazing to see it in America with its steel mills and airfields. The world ain't so bad, when you got Japhies, I thought, and felt glad. All the aching muscles and the hunger in my belly were bad enough, and the surroundant dark rocks, the fact that there is nothing to soothe you with kisses and soft words, but just to be sitting there meditating and praying for the world with another earnest young man--'twere good enough to have been born just to die, as we all are. Something will come of it in the Milky Ways of eternity stretching in front of all out phantom unjaundiced eyes, friends. I felt like telling Japhy everything I thought but I knew it didn't matter and moreover he knew it anyway and silence is the golden mountain.