Dharma Bum

A lot of San Francisco beat poetry is written about one thing, but it is really meant as a social commentary, coded between the interesting prose and the metaphorical diction. In Jack Kerouac’s work The Dharma Bums he focuses on his life through a separate lense. He is incognito in the sense that he names himself Ray Smith. He also alludes to other beat poets through the work and they are as follows:

Gary Snyder is portrayed through the character Japhy Ryder
Caroline Kerouac is portrayed through the character Nin
Allen Ginsberg is portrayed through the character Alvah Goldbook
Natalie Jackson is portrayed through the character Rosie Buchanan
Carolyn Cassidy is portrayed through Evelyn
Neal Cassidy is portrayed through Cody Pomeray
Philip Lamantia is portrayed through Francis DaPavia
Claude Dalenberg is portrayed through Bud Diefendorf
Michael McClure is portrayed through Ike O'Shay
Locke McCorkle is portrayed through Sean Monahan
John Montgomery is portrayed through Henry Morley
Philip Walen is portrayed through Warren Coughlin.

I also enjoyed how he pondered the idea of college saying, “Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets is each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization.”