Books like The Dharma Bums

That's a completely nostalgic four stars of course. Has there been a writer whose reputation has plummeted quite so much between the 70s and now as jolly Jack and his tales of merry misogynism? But like Bob Dylan saysWhile riding on a train goin’ westI fell asleep for to take my restI dreamed a dream that made me sadConcerning myself and the first few friends I hadWith half-damp eyes I stared to the roomWhere my friends and I spent many an afternoonWhere we together weathered many a stormLaughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the mornWith haunted hearts through the heat and coldWe never thought we could ever get oldWe thought we could sit forever in funBut our chances really was a million to oneAs easy it was to tell black from whiteIt was all that easy to tell wrong from rightAnd our choices were few and the thought never hitThat the one road we traveled would ever shatter and splitWell that was me and my pals. I know where each of them are to this day, but we don't see each other. The choices multiplied and it became no longer easy to tell black from white. Back then we built a whole galaxy of heroes up from wild trips to the art house cinema to quarry Bergman or Pasolini from the granite cliffs of existentialism, or raids on libraries and second hand bookshops when we got to hear first about Kerouac and Kesey, not to mention Tolkien and Mervyn Peake, not to mention Emily Dickinson and Captain Beefheart and folk music and Alan Lomax and Alan Watts and John Fahey and Buffy Sainte-Marie. In those days every discovery hit like an express train and every bookshelf held high explosives. Life is not lived at that intensity for too many years. So forgive me for my four stars for Kerouac, the old bum, the old broke down disgraced beat with his typing not writing and every other reviewer on this site liking to put the boot in, and justified too, really, they're not good books - would I recommed any young person with any marbles to read nearly the whole of Kerouac's pile of typing as I myself did? NO!! Read almost anything BUT Kerouac! But my half damp eyes are staring back to that room. It was on Willow Road in Carlton. You can find it on Google Earth but some other people live there now.