I’m most of the way through Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, and a couple of things really strike me about the book.  This is the first time I’ve read Kerouac, so I can’t compare it to his other works (although I’m interested to read On the Road now) but having just finished a biography about him during the period he’s writing about, the whole book is really just lightly fictionalized auto-biography.  That makes for interesting reading, and Kerouac’s style is certainly entertaining. 

The thing that strikes me the most is that here were a bunch of guys who were worried that the combination of suburbia and television were turning Americans into anti-intellectual, under-educated drones who never went outside.  And this was FIFTY years ago!  Well, unfortunately they’ve turned out to be largely right.  TV hadn’t even been around more than a few years then, and already its effects were being acurately predicted.  Sigh.  <rant>Stop violating your minds with television, people! Go outside!</rant>

I find it interesting that the antidote that Kerouac and the other Dharma Bums suggested was essentially voluntary homelessness.  Not something that’s easy to do these days.  However, I think I now understand a lot more about one of my uncles.  He totally fits the Dharma Bum profile.  I had no idea.