This is my second Kerouac, after On the Road many years back, and my first in audiobook form. It might be the best way to hear Kerouac's beat poetry in the prose, to hear them spoken:

"... All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea... "

and so many of those two-word pitter-patterns.

Kerouac's characters, heavily based on the poets of the San Francisco Renaissance of the 50s, shine - Japhy (Gary Snyder) in particular; in fact the whole story is a love-song to Japhy, written as Kerouac is trying on Buddhism as one tries on a coat to see if it fits. It does, and it doesn't; it's at least ill-fitting for the author in this story.

It's been a long time since I read On the Road, and I remember liking it better than Dharma Bums, but I'll definitely read - or probably hear - more Kerouac, to see how he matured and changed and grew.

Hoo!