 He was badly beaten by three men outside the San Remo Cafe at 189 Bleecker Street in New York City one night.Neal Cassady, possibly as a result of his new notoriety as the central character of the book, was set up and arrested for selling marijuana.In response, Kerouac chronicled parts of his own experience with Buddhism, as well as some of his adventures with Gary Snyder and other San Francisco-area poets, in "The Dharma Bums", set in California and Washington and published in 1958.