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On the Road: The Original Scroll

by Jack Kerouac, Penny Vlagopoulos (Introduction), George Mouratidis (Introduction), Joshua Kupetz (Introduction), Howard Cunnel (Introduction)

4.2 of 5 stars 4.20 · rating details · 3,784 ratings · 342 reviews

The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published as Kerouac originally composed it

IN THREE WEEKS in April of 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his first full draft of On the Road—typed as a single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper, which he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll. A major literary event when it was published in Viking hardcover...more

Paperback, 408 pages

Published August 26th 2008 by Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (first published August 16th 2007)

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Feb 14, 2009 Alice rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been meaning to review this book for a while, but I get sort of emotional reading what other people think about Kerouac, and it has been hard to figure out what I want to say. I feel almost personally insulted by some of the more negative reviews which is totally weird and inappropriate of me. I guess I identify with Kerouac because in his heart he's not really all that unconventional, but he loves the company of wild adventurers and can be talked into almost anything.

I reread the original...more I've been meaning to review this book for a while, but I get sort of emotional reading what other people think about Kerouac, and it has been hard to figure out what I want to say. I feel almost personally insulted by some of the more negative reviews which is totally weird and inappropriate of me. I guess I identify with Kerouac because in his heart he's not really all that unconventional, but he loves the company of wild adventurers and can be talked into almost anything.

I reread the original (well I guess the scroll is the real original, but you know what I mean) before I read this, and they are very similar. On the Road is an amazing book & the scroll is the same amazing book minus paragraphs, plus all the sex, drugs and real names. The biggest surprise for me was that Carlo Marx was Alan Ginsberg. How did I not know that? Including the sexual relationship between Carlo Marx/Alan Ginsberg and Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady changed the dynamic of the book's Denver portion quite a bit. Cassady's bisexuality is hinted at in the edited OTR but spelling it out the way Kerouac does in the scroll makes the whole situation more complex. In OTR as originally published, Marx & Moriarty have a weird dynamic. Marx always seemed a little jealous of Dean's girls, but I never really got why. Now it makes more sense. Another interesting bit cut out of the edited OTR is Kerouac's visit to his ex-wife. All that gossip and trivia aside, the spirit of On the Road feels the same in this version.

I read OTR for the first time when I was in high school, and every time I've read it since then I learn something different about the characters and myself. There is so much in this book I never get tired of: the motion, the adventure, the sense of an America of boundless size and possibility...

Okay, I'll stop gushing now. I guess I can understand why Kerouac isn't for everyone, but he changed my life for better or worse and helped make me the sort of person who feels compelled to drive aimlessly around the country every few years just to see what's out there. I'll never regret the road trips I've taken, and though there are many writers whose travel narratives have inspired me, Kerouac will always be my first love in that category.

I have to admit that with the exception of Dharma Bums I'm not crazy about his other books. I’ve tried to get into them, but I never could. I think Big Sur is the only other one I've managed to finish and it depressed the hell out of me. The exuberance and optimism that made me fall in love with On the Road faded quickly for poor Kerouac.(less)

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Oct 10, 2007 Tosh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Five stars is not enough for this book: it should be ten stars! This is a very beautiful book and rightfully an American classic. Stunning!

"On The Road" is the real deal. I just started reading this and it's just a fantastic read. The energy just pops out of the page. The punk rock of novels. Mr. Jack just had the 'moment' when he wrote this, and it is incredible experience to share that 'moment' with the great man. Great.

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Sep 08, 2011 Tancredi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir, statunitensi

"Questa è la storia dell'America. Tutti fanno quel che credono di dover fare."

Tutti conoscono Sulla strada, romanzo manifesto della beat generation, troppo d'avanguardia per gli anni in cui fu pubblicato eppure inevitabilmente prodotto intimo di quegli stessi anni. Migliaia sono le opere, le creazioni, che quel romanzo simbolo ispirò, rendendo oggi fin troppo abusata l'idea stessa del viaggio sulla strada, da costa a costa. Eppure forse pochi sanno che il "vero" romanzo si nasconde altrove: un "...more

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Jul 31, 2010 Jim Cherry rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The plot to “On The Road” wouldn’t really tell you what “On The Road” is about because the travels of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity are more existential than overt action. Yes, they drive from coast to coast, meet people, go to parties, but it’s not the action that is important but the experience Sal and Dean derive from each adventure.

The real story of “On The Road: The Original Scroll” isn’t in the book but in how Kerouac created it. The autobiographical elements that made up “On The Road,”...more The plot to “On The Road” wouldn’t really tell you what “On The Road” is about because the travels of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity are more existential than overt action. Yes, they drive from coast to coast, meet people, go to parties, but it’s not the action that is important but the experience Sal and Dean derive from each adventure.

The real story of “On The Road: The Original Scroll” isn’t in the book but in how Kerouac created it. The autobiographical elements that made up “On The Road,” Kerouac and Neal Cassady taking three road trips across the United States occurred between 1947-1949. After years of false starts, Kerouac decided to lay out the whole story and write it from beginning to end on one roll of paper so he wouldn’t have to stop his train of thought replacing page after page as he finished it. Inspired by Jazz improvisation and spontaneity, Kerouac undertook to get the novel he had in his head onto the page. He got a roll of teletype paper, and with help from Benzedrine and coffee Kerouac wrote the novel in marathon sessions of writing over the course of 3 weeks. When he was done he took it to his editor, Robert Giroux, who was dumbfounded when Kerouac unfurled it in his office.

“On The Road” the version that was released in 1957 was a masterpiece and changed the rules of writing fiction, as well as inspiring a generation of teenagers that would go on the road in the 60’s in search of their own existential adventures and kicks. Reading “On The Road: The Original Scroll” you realize that the story flows much better in Kerouac’s original vision of it. Giroux as editor had with all good intentions made Kerouac’s book salable for the times, without removing Kerouac’s artistic achievements but left a somewhat clunky novel that later readers have found hard to get into. I think if they read “On The Road: The Original Scroll” they’ll find that shortcoming removed.

For the avid Kerouac fan and aficinado “On The Road: The Original Scroll” will be a revelatory look at Kerouac’s process of writing in what he had originally intended. And there’s a certain fun in reading the book with all the people’s real names intact, instead of character names that the publisher insisted on to avoid lawsuits. If you’re coming to Kerouac new, I think this original version of Kerouac’s work will highlight the spontaneity of Kerouac’s work and the reader will come away with an appreciation of the freshness of Kerouac’s work.(less)

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Nov 18, 2012 Yasmin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well it is actually hard to say if I enjoyed this book, it wasn't terrible, but this is one of the occasions when a better word should be used. So I think three stars is fair. At first I thought to say straight away that Kerouac was a sort of son to Steinbeck's short stories like Sweet Thursday, Cannery Row, etc. etc. and that his road odyssey was him and some pals escaping death and situations they couldn't handle. But it is much more than that, in fact it was so many things that I wondered at...more Well it is actually hard to say if I enjoyed this book, it wasn't terrible, but this is one of the occasions when a better word should be used. So I think three stars is fair. At first I thought to say straight away that Kerouac was a sort of son to Steinbeck's short stories like Sweet Thursday, Cannery Row, etc. etc. and that his road odyssey was him and some pals escaping death and situations they couldn't handle. But it is much more than that, in fact it was so many things that I wondered at the end if I was in a deluge! It was as he said some friends went on a journey looking for something, they didn't find it but they found something else instead. Now what they were looking for and ended up by finding I would say is up for each reader to evaluate for themselves. When he writes about the country and the people over all that is when he is most like Steinbeck, unfortunately when he writes the talking points between characters that's when it gets confusing. Some could say it's for a set generation and therefore dated, I didn't find it dated because I think in a lot of ways we are all seeking our odyssey out on the road, literally or figueratively, maybe both, perhaps the methods are different but the purpose is the same. I think what spurred on Kerouac was disalluisonment and a sense of profound loss that he couldn't find a way to deal with. His brother and his father. What a great confusion it was for a great many people at the time, one war was barely ended and yet peace was out of reach. What can you do? Where can you go? When all that fighting and suffering was experienced and was it all to end in a nuclear explosion? And yet it seems to me that we have never stopped living in times of uncertainty, they are continous, but sometimes you have to get out and get away and try and find your place in the world. You may not find that answer but you may find something else. If you can remember what it is you're getting away from. There was a reoccurring theme when Kerouac said he felt like he had forgotten something, but didn't know what. Sometimes when I leave a place, even though I have all my belongings, it has felt as though I had left something behind, something I forgot. Somehow I don't think for Kerouac that feeling ever went away...but perhaps it did. What a surprise to find he was French-Canadian! His family came from Quebec originally, one great land mass to another, one identity to another, or rather attempting to find another identity. There is so much in this book that it may take me awhile to understand, I may never find that time to work it all through. He is well worth the read.(less)

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Mar 07, 2012 Sheri rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This might be my only 1 star review on Goodreads out of 300+ I've rated here so far. Why didn't I like it? In short, it's a buddy-travel-memoir by an extremely immature and sexist 30-something written in a single paragraph. That's right. All 300+ pages of this book (and I'm not counting the 100 pages of introductions by the so-called scholars and critics who adore Kerouac and this book) are a single paragraph. About a quarter of the way through this behemoth paragraph, it was all I could do not...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Nikki rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

My first experience of On the Road was this quotation:

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

It was actually quoted in a fanfiction, as Axel's favourite book (Kingdom Hearts AU). It's stuck with me, ever since: not the fanfiction itself, but the q...more

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Jan 17, 2011 SamanthaLee rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Perhaps it's because I am a 19-year-old liberal arts college student or perhaps it's because I always have and probably always will yearn for excitement and beauty and adventure, but whatever the reason may be, I absolutely loved Kerouac's On The Road>i>. Every passage drew me in deeper and deeper until I could hardly stand just how much I wanted jump in the car or on a train or bus and make it across the country to the West Coast. Even the frantic tales of endless NYC nights beckoned me t...more

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Aug 22, 2010 Kathryn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

On the Road – Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical novel of the exhilarating and exhausting cross-country road trips of 20-somethings Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty – was such an enormous watershed in American culture that it seems quite fitting that its 50th anniversary should be noted by Viking with no less than three newly published books: "On the Road: The 50th Anniversary Edition," "On the Road: The Original Scroll," and "Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of ‘On the Road."

While the 50th anniversa...more

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Jan 07, 2009 Stop added it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

Read the STOP SMILING review of the British edition of On the Road: The Original Scroll:

We’ve been waiting a long time for a definitive (textual) edition of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. But, alas, On the Road: The Original Scroll (Howard Cunnell, editor: Viking-Penguin, 2007) isn’t it. Yes, we have the original unexpurgated transcript with the real names reinstated and an informative if at times ill-organized introduction on the writing of the novel by Cunnell that corrects some misconceptions on...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of poetic prose and searchers for an earlier hillbilly america

The continent "groans" again and again.

The night is too often "sad," the cities are "mad" or "wild" and "sad" some more. New York is the "edge of the continent," and San Francisco, too and sometimes they're the "rim of the world," or some similar allusion.

Jack Kerouac and his friends, would be considered drunks and losers by the standards of most. The author's muse and messiah, Neal Cassady, is a fellow too easily distracted, undisciplined and, by today's measurements, a candidate for depressi...more

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Nov 29, 2009 Jen Knox rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed this book far more a few years ago. I think Kerouac's tale is decent, gloriously rebellious, but over-hyped; this book is marked with a few fantastic insights but my belief is that On The Road is only popular due to timeliness and the oft-consumed glamorization of alcoholism. Kerouac was the face of the movement, not the grit.

William Burroughs was able to write about such tales while bringing to life the disease, the twisting of the gut that follows escapades similar to Kerouac's, only...more

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Jan 22, 2009 Rosemary Ceravolo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: all the world

You had to be there to love and understand Kerouac's genius.

Here's an amazingly prescient quote from the (c. 1948-1951),
Original Scroll of "On the Road," finally published in 2007:

p.219 - "When daybreak came we were
zooming through New Jersey
with a great cloud of Metropolitan NY
rising before us in the snowy distance.
Neal had a sweater
wrapped around his ears
to keep warm. He said we were a band of
Arabs coming to blow up New York.
We swished through the Lincoln Tunnel
and came out...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Claudia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Este ano comprei um conjunto de post-it para não riscar os livros com um lápis. Foi uma boa ideia, este livro ficou cheio de post-it laranja. Kerouac entregou-se de corpo e alma a este livro, dá para sentir. Quase ouvi o barulho da máquina de escrever. Incrível como ele conseguiu relatar a sua aventura com o amigo Neal (entre outros) de forma tão real. A sensação que dá é que Kerouac estava a escrever ao mesmo tempo que as coisas aconteciam, o que é impossível. Se escrevi ao final do dia o que s...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Roberto rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sexy-like-an-elf-sitting-on-a

I first read On The Road (the non-original-scroll) when I was 15 years old and it changed my life. I was off school for the summer holidays and I read The Catcher In The Rye too, and despite not much else happening that summer, it remains vivid in my memory. It was the first book that spoke to me, or for me, and I guess it either altered my way of thinking or else it validated what was already becoming a way of looking at the world for me. For that reason I've always been reluctant to revisit On...more I first read On The Road (the non-original-scroll) when I was 15 years old and it changed my life. I was off school for the summer holidays and I read The Catcher In The Rye too, and despite not much else happening that summer, it remains vivid in my memory. It was the first book that spoke to me, or for me, and I guess it either altered my way of thinking or else it validated what was already becoming a way of looking at the world for me. For that reason I've always been reluctant to revisit On The Road, though I did go on to read most of Kerouac's work and I rate Visions Of Cody and The Subterraneans as right up there too. I was worried I'd misjudged it, or maybe that I'd changed. You see footage of Kerouac in his later days with those broken capillaries, all flabby, right-wing and mean and you worry that if even he could change, or if that was his true nature, then maybe I had too, and maybe that's just the way it goes.

But that's really and truly not the case, and reading it again nearly 20 years later, in its original form, has only confirmed to me that On The Road is a magnificent piece of writing. What I didn't pick up on the first time round was just how much it is a pure and a sincere hymn to America, a Whitman-ey celebration of the variety and beauty of the American landscape and its people, tinged with sadness because it is a land that even then was changing from the great country of the frontier and railroad and cotton fields. What it also does better than anything is it captures that great youthful yearning for life, that pent-up desire to just experience everything, the idea that life is somewhere right out there happening and you want to swallow it whole or just lose yourself in its chaos - that every experience is full of meaning or that maybe none of it has any meaning at all, and the great sadness of that too. Kerouac was an incredible natural and nervy writer, he writes with a relentless energy to GET IT ALL DOWN, like the act of recording events is in itself a holy act. He writes about Neal Cassidy as a kind of flawed saint, his lost brother, selfish, irresponsible speedfreak with so much charisma, energy and soul that you want to be there with him too anyway, though clearly he was a maniac who could've done with a good nights sleep. Through Cassidy, and because of Cassidy, Kerouac really found a way in to the heart of America, an America whose true nature might then have been glimpsed through the windshield of a car, or in the faces of its hungry and homeless, also in jazz and benzedrine, but for the rest of us (especially those of us living elsewhere) it can be found in this book, and always will be.
(less)

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Nov 02, 2012 Wirotomo Nofamilyname rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: i-bought-it, english, novel-other

Saya sudah membaca e-booknya bersama Jakarta Bookworms dan saya hanya bisa memberi 2 bintang, karena bingung sendiri dengan cerita di buku ini yang sepertinya hanya cerita ngalor ngidul si Kerouac dengan teman-temannya (saya sepakat dengan Silvana dalam hal ini).
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/6...

Ronny memberitahukan bahwa ini adalah contoh karya generasi yg disebut sebagai "Beat Generation". Yang sangat bertumpu pada American Dreams yang memang sukar dipahami oleh orang non-Amerika.
Dan Ama...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Pedro Freitas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Um livro há muito desejado e uma espera que não podia ter sido mais recompensadora!
Contradição e paradoxo são os melhores sinónimos para esta obra. Paradoxo desde logo entre o cenário e as personagens. O cenário: A estrada! a estrada entre o Este e o Oeste, a estrada across America, onde Kerouac nos leva por uma beleza que ele não nos descreve literalmente, mas transmite-nos sim as sensações que ela lhe desperta, e é nessas sensações (extremas muitas vezes) que descobrimos toda a beleza dos loc...more Um livro há muito desejado e uma espera que não podia ter sido mais recompensadora!
Contradição e paradoxo são os melhores sinónimos para esta obra. Paradoxo desde logo entre o cenário e as personagens. O cenário: A estrada! a estrada entre o Este e o Oeste, a estrada across America, onde Kerouac nos leva por uma beleza que ele não nos descreve literalmente, mas transmite-nos sim as sensações que ela lhe desperta, e é nessas sensações (extremas muitas vezes) que descobrimos toda a beleza dos locais por ele cruzados.
Mas este cenário aparentemente belo é habitado por estranhas personagens: toda a sua geração de amigos, seres inconstantes, sem destino traçado, que tal como o próprio Kerouac se lançam à estrada sem qualquer meta definida, baloiçando permanentemente entre relações fugazes, entre estados de loucura e de depressão, de contentamento e de interrogação, entre o bar como local de festa, e o alcool como o refúgio de um futuro que não conhecem nem querem conhecer. Aqui a estrada não é o meio para atingir nenhum fim, a estrada é o fim em si mesmo. A viagem não é a transição entre dois lugares, mas a viagem é verdadeiramente o único local onde kerouac e os seus querem viver.
Um retrato brilhante da américa, de uma certa américa diga-se, "in all its madness and its sadness", numa história que tão depressa nos repulsa como nos faz desejar estar dentro dela.
O mesmo sentimento de paradoxo na amizade entre Jack Kerouac e Neal Cassady que tão depressa nos fazem pensar que são o exemplo último do que é amizade, como nos fazem acreditar que no fundo precisam apenas de viver de relações efémeras onde nenhum laço fica.... Prefiro acreditar na versão benigna depois de ler na última página aquela despedida final tão especial entre entre Jack e Neal.
Um livro a que muito me apetecia dar 5 estrelas, mesmo muito! mas há uma perda de fulgor na história quando Kerauc desce para o novo destino: O SUL e com ele o México.
Mas fica o ensinamento da liberdade pelo simples prazer de a ter, de a sentir e de a desfrutar: "because the road is always more interesting ahead, always ahead"(less)

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Apr 25, 2012 Beth rated it 2 of 5 stars

I felt hungover by the time I was done reading this book. I couldn't wait for it to end and it's not because I wanted to find out what was going to happen.

While there are a few great lines like, "My mother once said that the world would never find peace unless men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness...," and the famous, " ...Because the only people who interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that...more

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Dec 22, 2010 Carrie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: commuter-rail, book-project, favorites

I became a fan of the 'original' version around my second year of high school. I remember idolizing these crazy characters - to the point of writing a paper for English class on 'The Beats'. When I heard that this minimally edited version was available, I looked forward to reliving my love of this wild bunch of friends...jumping madly across the continent. Free of conformist society, traditional writing methods, and the mindless responsibilities of the new modern life.

At first I was intimidate...more I became a fan of the 'original' version around my second year of high school. I remember idolizing these crazy characters - to the point of writing a paper for English class on 'The Beats'. When I heard that this minimally edited version was available, I looked forward to reliving my love of this wild bunch of friends...jumping madly across the continent. Free of conformist society, traditional writing methods, and the mindless responsibilities of the new modern life.

At first I was intimidated by the visually dense pages of text - unbroken by paragraphs or chapters (except for the BOOK 2, BOOK 3, BOOK 4 titles within the lines of text), but Kerouac's energetic and often humorous storytelling made the book's 400 pages zoom by - like the cows and telephone poles along the Mid-Western highway.

Overall, this version wasn't as different as I thought it might be. It was a little raunchier - there were a few more detailed sex scenes and some homosexual moments were left in the manuscript, but it wasn't shocking reading it from the perspective of someone living in 2010. The extra material also didn't change much of the tone or path of the story. Most of the now uncut bits just provided another scene of something crazy.

I didn't read it concurrently with the established version, but I felt that the 'scroll' version was more descriptive - especially near the end of the book while the group was driving through Mexico. I enjoyed seeing the 'real' names of the characters like Allen, Neal, and Bill. I also thought that showing Jack as a guy living with his mother in the scroll was much more straightforward than placing him with some mysterious aunt in the mainstream version. It brought one of the less savory aspects of the beat lifestyle into focus. It was harder to be awestruck with the 'king of the beats' when he's a man living with his mother...in her apartment in Queens...constantly bumming money off of her.

I don't know if it's because of the decade that's passed since I first read On The Road or if this version of the book just presents the characters in a more dejected light...but I found myself feeling more saddened by the characters' lifestyles than inspired by them. Sure they were free of the daily grind, but they were also free of a way to support themselves (for the most part), free of a stable home, free of solid romantic relationships, and free of self-esteem. The fact that these characters had either failed at their relationships and jobs, or (most of the time) failed to even try at anything other than running away really struck me this time. They even reached a point where they didn't know what they were running from anymore...just go go go road is life...

Maybe I've just become a bit of a square, and I'll balance out in the next decade. As a book I still do recommend giving it a try. It's a piece of cultural history, and it's written like a letter from a close friend - who brings me into his inside jokes and trys to enlighten me with societal observations....unfortunately Jack's a friend that I used to look up to more when I was 15.(less)

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Sep 14, 2012 Samantha rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a book that lives up to its title. You really are "on the road" for the entire book. Kerouac's seminal beat era story of life traversing the American highways is brilliant. He talks so candidly about everything and this is one of my newest favourite books.
Written chronologically and almost in a stream of consciousness style, On The Road is the story of Kerouac's relationship with Neal Cassady. Every grimy detail is covered, from bathroom graffiti to homosexual encounters to damaging a C...more

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Aug 24, 2011 Samantha rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://thehairpin.com/2011/07/favorit...:

"I’m not going to sugarcoat it. This book is straight up terrible. It's a bunch of rambling about eating some sandwiches and driving around while eating sandwiches, and driving around, and then making some more sandwiches, which you will then eat while driving around. It is the universal favorite book of commitment-phobes. And please don't quote me that paragraph about how the only people for you are the mad ones who pop like roman candles. You know what’...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Esme Lorraine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading this book was difficult, as I felt as if I had jumped into absolute chaos anytime I read it. I couldn't help but feeling as if I was yelling it as I read it, even though I was reading it silently. The style of chaotic writing definitely lends itself well to match the absolute insanity of what was going on in the lives of Jack and his friends. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to travel, can have a good time whenever and wherever they are, and can solidly stick to a book bec...more

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May 16, 2013 Wells Hamilton rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some unorganized thoughts on this novel:

Flowing, rambling, and transforming.

"...Only the sensation of death kicking at his heels to move on."

Jack Kerouac is able to look on all flavors of humanity with love and observance, not disdain or suspicion.

There's no time for anxiety or regret-- just riding the road with love for new experiences, which, with the right people, come perpetually and momentarily. Money is commonplace and used whenever needed or wanted; it is merely a temporal means to gett...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Jason Ernst rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After intending to read "On the Road" for a good five years, I finally put it on my wish list and received a copy that contained two versions: "The Original Scroll" and one of the more punctuated, commonly published versions.

While I didn't enjoy either, my impression of what I read should be taken with a thick grain of salt. I am a wanderer at heart who has spend the last few years traipsing around the globe while writing copy to fund my budget travel experiences, which have included plenty of h...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Kerouac's raw narrative voice is bewitching. This is a book that is infinite. With no beginning and no end. Like a never-ending road. From car to highway, to New York, to California, to strangers, to girls, to Jazz, to the birth of the Beat generation, and then to Neal, the ever-so-present Neal, the book is a mad depiction of the world that Kerouac created and lived in, with his friends, with a beauty that is as courageous as it is mouthwatering. If that makes any sense.

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Feb 15, 2013 J. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Two friends Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady (Sal and Dean) zig zag across America stopping off in New York, Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans, L.A. Mexico, whilst indulging- drinking, partying, taking drugs. There is a lot of manic rushing around and 'digging' things, at times I thought that the book was more about a 'feeling' than a commentary of any sort. Beat generation leading lights Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs are featured.

Kerouac is not the best writer, Truman Capote commented s...more Two friends Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady (Sal and Dean) zig zag across America stopping off in New York, Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans, L.A. Mexico, whilst indulging- drinking, partying, taking drugs. There is a lot of manic rushing around and 'digging' things, at times I thought that the book was more about a 'feeling' than a commentary of any sort. Beat generation leading lights Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs are featured.

Kerouac is not the best writer, Truman Capote commented sulkily that it 'isn't writing at all - it's typing'. Catty comments aside his writing method is interesting. Using several journals of notes 'On The Road' was written in a three week burst of typing. The finished product consisted of a typescript, a scroll of paper three inches thick, a single spaced unbroken 120 feet long paragraph. It was heavily edited censured and cut by one third. (I read the uncensored version, I didn't think the omissions changed the sense of the book but of course it's better to read something in its entirety). Kerouac called his style 'spontaneous prose', a stream of consciousness. The rhythm is a sort of bee-bop jazz poetry. If possible you should listen to Kerouac reading as that gets the metre and rhythm into your head. Jack Kerouac reading on the Steve Allen show- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMEacD...

This book is perfect for young men starting college or going off on gap years, J1s. My favorite part of the book is when Jack is hitch hiking on his own sitting on the back of trucks, passing small farms in the middle of nowhere eating in small diners. Reading on the road peaked my interest in jazz a hither to uncharted musical landscape for me. There is one scene when Neal and Jack are in a bar listening to a jazz musician and it describes perfectly the feverish rapture of watching a great musician. For a real sense of what the beat generation was about Allen Ginsberg's poem 'Howl' is a good place to start. If you decide to read 'On the road' read the original scroll, the names aren't changed and the homosexual scenes are included.(less)

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Oct 14, 2011 Maegan rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011, physical-copy, american-authors

mushy gushy the American dream is misguided so lets road trip and commit depravities, bitches. My favorite part was when he writes about passing out drunk in a barroom bathroom stall and sailors commence to piss, shit, and vomit all over him till morning. I don't know if that bit was offered in the 1957 publication but it damn well should have.

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May 13, 2013 Katie rated it 2 of 5 stars

I have wanted to read this book for years. When I started reading, I was surprised at how different it was than I expected. As with any book, it felt like the end of a mini-era when I finished it and I was saddened by it. On the one hand, I can't help but thinking the whole group were selfish, self-indulgent losers that go around doing drugs and making babies and abandoning everything while disguising it as some spiritual search for "IT"....but I also like that after all that searching, nothing...more

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Mar 15, 2013 James Trammell rated it 5 of 5 stars

A lot of friends, when they learned I was reading On the Road for the first time, made comments that, when roughly summed up, sounded something like, ”Yeah, I read that when I was 19 and it excited me to no end but that of the road, but when I opened it again a few years later it was at best pedestrian,” as though to warn me against any high hopes my thirty-year-old eyes may have been harboring at the outset. And to be fair, the typical thirty year old has long since dealt with (or pushed down,...more A lot of friends, when they learned I was reading On the Road for the first time, made comments that, when roughly summed up, sounded something like, ”Yeah, I read that when I was 19 and it excited me to no end but that of the road, but when I opened it again a few years later it was at best pedestrian,” as though to warn me against any high hopes my thirty-year-old eyes may have been harboring at the outset. And to be fair, the typical thirty year old has long since dealt with (or pushed down, smothered and buried, anyway) the more vocal sections of their youthful angst and disquietude, settling appropriately and graciously into their societal groove; alas, I am still not there.

Whether my still-pending arrival is because I am somehow emotionally stunted or because of some other more or less noble reason is of no matter; what matters here is only that it is still pending, a fact that reading OtR only served to illuminate beyond all doubt.

As in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, sentence structure and writing rules and novel phrasing are thrown out the window here, though with entirely different motives. While Hemingway so vicariously used Frederic Henry’s uneducated hand to craft his account, Kerouac fastidiously and unabashedly pushed his square-peg-of-a-life into the round hole of words on a page. By the end (heck, by the middle), you are looking for your very own Neal Cassady to precariously slide across your front lawn in his beat Plymouth yelling something incomprehensible while flinging the door open and motioning to you to get in and quick.

It’s not that I want to be gone on Benzedrine, or dance with Mexican prostitutes until dawn, or steal cars to get back to the bar from which I stole a car; far from it. It’s not that I want to hitchhike across America or shoot whisky with farmboys on the flatbed of a truck with nothing to hold onto but my view of the stars, though I would not turn much of this down. It’s simply that I want to live outside of my society-assigned groove, out from underneath the layers and layers of wet blankets to which my feeble frame has so vaguely given shape.

For that reason and many more, I will keep this extraordinary book on a close table for a long time. And hopefully, the next time I open it’s pages, I won’t be struck with what I at that point see as “at best pedestrian.”

Check out Twenty4Twelve.Tumblr.com for more reviews!(less)

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Mar 06, 2009 Robin marked it as to-read

I have been trying to read this for ages, it's been recommended by many friends and i know it's a classic. Not to mention the history and comments it makes on the times, but sadly I've not been able to get into it. I'll have to try again soon.

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About Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. He is perhaps the best known of a group of writers and friends who came to be known as the Beat Generation, a term he himself created.

Kerouac's work was popular, but received little critical acclaim during his lifetime. Today, he is considered an important and influential writer who inspired others, including Tom Robbins, Lester Bang...more

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“..but then they danced down the street like dingldodies and I shambled after as usual as I've been doing all my life after people that interest me, because the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing.. but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road ~The Original Scroll~” — 1 person liked it

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