English Audio - English Audio Books

A vivid evocation of a part of our time.New York Post

The Dharma Bums, with its mystical, environmental, and cultural messages, is a meaningful and relevant piece.Library Journal

A poetic celebration of life.a fine, clear narration by Parker. Sound quality is excellent.KLIATT, magazine of book reviews for schools and libraries


Two ebullient young men are engaged in a passionate search for dharma, or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen way, which takes them climbing into the high Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude, a lesson that has a hard time surviving their forays into the pagan groves of San Franciscos Bohemia with its marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, experiments in yabyum, and similar nonascetic pastimes.

This autobiographical novel appeared just a year after the authors explosive On the Road put the Beat generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the best-seller lists. The same expansiveness, humor, and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novel ignites this one.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He attended local Catholic schools and eventually Columbia University, becoming in the 1940s and 1950s a member of what was to be called "the Beat generation." His first novel appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road (1957) that epitomized to the world the Beat philosophy.

Tom Parker, recipient of the Golden Voice award, records a remarkable variety of books while pursuing his love of theater by directing two or three professional stage productions a year in the Washington, D.C., area.