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Sep 30, 2007

Jessica rated it:

This is probably the worst book I have ever finished, and I'm forever indebted to the deeply personality-disordered college professor who assigned it, because if it hadn't been for that class I never would've gotten through, and I gotta tell you, this is the book I love to hate.

I deeply cherish but don't know that I fully agree with Truman Capote's assessment: that _On the Road_ "is not writing at all -- it's typing."

Lovely, Turman, but let's be clear: typing by More...

128 comments like (149 people liked it)

Dec 07, 2011

Ian rated it:

A View from the Couch

OTR has received some negative reviews lately, so I thought I would try to explain my rating.

This novel deserves to lounge around in a five star hotel rather than languish in a lone star saloon.

Disclaimer

Please forgive my review. It is early morning and I have just woken up with a sore head, an empty bed and a full bladder.

Confesssion

Let me begin with a confession that dearly wants to become an assertion More...

49 comments like (34 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Jahn rated it:

I've been thinking about this book a lot lately, so I figured that I'd go back and write something about it.

When I first read this book, I loved it as a piece of art, but its effect on me was different than I expected. So many people hail Kerouac as the artist who made them quit their jobs and go to the road, become a hippie or a beat and give up the rest. When I read it though, I had been completely obsessed with hippie culture for a long time, and it caused me to steer away fro More...

1 comment like (44 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Adam rated it:

I'm supposed to like On the Road, right? Well, I don't. I hate it and I always have. There are a lot of reasons why I hate it. I find Kerouac's attitude toward the world pathetically limited and paternalistic. In On the Road he actually muses about how much he wishes that he could have been born "a Negro in the antebellum South," living a simple life free from worry, and does so seemingly without any sense of irony. On every page, the book is about how Kerouac (a young, white, middle-c More...

24 comments like (48 people liked it)

Aug 03, 2008

Katherine rated it:

Things I liked about On the Road.
-It's a hymn to wild rides, all-night conversations with strangers, lunacy, letting life happen, and getting out of your life and experiencing the world.

-The energetic, random, bursting-with-possibility, jazz-inspired prose. I listened to the audiobook version, and the narrator affected an "oh wowwww maaaan" hippie accent that really added to it as well.

-The way it seems to invite you in, calling to your sense of adventure More...

3 comments like (25 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2008

Kevin rated it:

A few months back I read Stephen Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage", a harrowing account of cross-country exploration made poignant by the character studies of adventurers Lewis & Clark. Undeterred in their mission to map the uncharted territories, the account of their expedition reminds readers of the vast wonders encompassed within America's borders. Equally awe-inspiring from the scope of their accomplishment and the natural beauty encountered, I felt compelled to perhaps make my own pil More...

1 comment like (14 people liked it)

May 06, 2008

Lostinanovel rated it:

I personally can't stand the characters. They cover up irresponsibility and real hurt to people in the guise of being artists. However, I do think there is more to this story.

Sure, they are jerks and they are bums and they are full of a lot of BS but as the book progresses, it becomes clear that they know it. These guys are also WW2 vets, and very dissimilar to the hippies who follow them, they do not have any anti-American or anti-establishment feelings. Also, they show a deep r More...

3 comments like (19 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Derek rated it:

The author William Kirn, in a piece for Slate magazine debating the merits of On The Road, wrote, "It's hard for me to summon any more 'critical distance' toward On the Road than I can toward the shape of my own face or the smell of my own sweat." I feel much the same way. For me, On the Road is inextricable from the time and place that I read it. I was, literally, on the road, looking at colleges in New England during my junior year of high school. I'd borrowed the book from my brand- More...

2 comments like (16 people liked it)

Feb 20, 2011

Paul rated it:

You couldn't pay me enough to re-read this baby now. Well, okay, I'd probably do it for £200. Alright, £100. Cash.

Kerouac took over from Steinbeck as the guy I had to read everything by when I was a young person. Steinbeck himself took over from Ray Bradbury. All three American males with a sentimental streak as wide as the Rio Grande.

Whole thing nearly turned me into a weepy hitchhiker who plays saxophone while he waits for a ride, then gets abducted by aliens who are More...

3 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2007

Jacob rated it:

I read On The Road when I was 16. When I was 16, I was so depressed. I went to a high school that had a moat around it and a seige mentality. On The Road made me not depressed. In fact ... it made me want to hitchhike, hop freight trains, and more importantly to write. If I were still 16 I would give On The Road 5 stars. I would say, go! Go! Read this book and be mad for life, delirious, exploding outward into the big uncovered road! Consume vanilla ice cream and apple pie. Drink black coffee. F More...

4 comments like (33 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2008

Maclain rated it:

I was in school at the Merchant Marine Academy. I was nineteen years old; a Georgia boy. I had no business being there. The deal at the academy is that you do six months of your Sophomore year and six months of your Junior years at sea. At least that’s how it used to be. I hear they are on trimesters now. Who knows? Anyway, it was this sea year that attracted me to the school in the first place.

So I’m nineteen, heavy boozer, balls to the walls so to speak. I was coming unhing More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Apr 25, 2011

Schmacko rated it:

They're like conquerors without a wilderness to claim, cowboys with no cattle to brand.

So much has been written about Jack Kerouac's On the Road, that I am not really going to write a review. I will pose my thoughts.

I think that for that half-dozen of people who know nothing about On the Road, I will say this. It's Jack Kerouac's most famous novel – Kerouac being the "King of the Beats" and the author who gave impetus to the Beat Generation along with the career More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2007

Jeff rated it:

"Oh, yeah man, On the Road. Dude, that's a good story man. So good. Yeah man... so... dude, yeah, man... dude, bro..." I had been stuck with concessions, AGAIN! My friend was producing a play, and me not being an actor, or a director, or a sound or lighting technician, but wanting to help out, got stuck with selling tickets and concessions. So I brought my book to read, and the book was ON THE ROAD. I was halfway through the book. And I sort of liked it.
I was kind of getti More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Aug 29, 2007

Julie rated it:

I don't wish to be hyperbolic, but Jack Kerouac may be (unwittingly) responsible for the national standard "The Ugly American." Believe me, I SO want to drink in the carpe diem, exploratory life-lust, but his rampant, self-indulgent Id-fest left many women, friends, and strangers in its wounded wake. His women are two-dimensional, holy-whore fan-bots; his friends are so much hog twaddle compared to his idol Dean; and his pursuit of adventure required much theft to fund it (even though More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2010

Cody rated it:

Matt Weiland, in the NYTimes Sunday Book Review (19 August 2007), sums up my sentiments toward *OtR* precisely:

"Twenty years ago, like so many slack 17-year-olds before and since, I devoured “On the Road” and it devoured me. The pages of my copy were dog-eared, -nosed and -throated, and I was beholden to the book in ways I can’t quite believe now. Did I really go for midnight drives down by the ruined flour mills with the tape deck blaring Dexter Gordon? Did I really attend a hi More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

sarafem rated it:

I could try to review this better than Jessica, but I don't think I could rant so poetically. Let me sum it up in my own abrupt way: This book is a travesty. This book wasted approximately four hours of my life. The entire Beat movement is awful, and I tried really hard to like it, back when I smoked pot and clove cigarettes and thought Jerry Garcia and Jim Morrison were God and wore hemp necklaces and patchouli. I gave this book a more-than-fair shot, and it shot me back, right in the ass. A co More...

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 16, 2010

Tim rated it:

There are some books that are just made to be read aloud, and this is surely one of them. Will Patton does a magical job of capturing the energy, the aimlessness, the yearning, the people of Kerouac's masterpiece.

I'd somehow always managed to avoid reading this book, associating it (wrongly) with the beat poets, whom I've never been that fond of.

It's a completely different animal.

Hearing it read aloud, I can understand how it arrived like a thunderclap in t More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2011

Marco rated it:

E non smisi nemmeno per un attimo di pensare a Dean e a come fosse salito sul treno e si fosse fatto più di cinquemila chilometri sopra quell'orrida terra senza nemmeno sapere il perché, se non per vedere me.

"Sulla strada" è un romanzo che andrebbe letto tutto d'un fiato, tutto in una volta. È un romanzo che non lascia il tempo di respirare, il tempo di fermarsi e mettersi a pensare che razza di vista si sta facendo. Anche i momenti di apparente calma sono falsi, illusioni. More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 23, 2008

Jessica rated it:

I read this book at the perfect time in my life, as though it had been written for me to read at that exact moment. It changed my ideas about traveling and really living life. It made me rethink my concept of what it means to be free. But most of all, it made me excited for all the adventures I had yet to experience.

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Apr 15, 2011

Meagan rated it:

When I was 16,I read this book called 'Neo-Bohemia'and the author made so many references to 'On The Road'by Jack Kerouac and prior to this book I had never even heard of Kerouac or any of the 'Beats'.I had no idea what 'beat' was,so I never understand that scene on that episode of 'The Simpsons' where the character Ned Flanders is thinking about his childhood and we see his parents talking to the pyschiatrist and they're Beats until after I began to read Kerouac and Ginsberg and all of the othe More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Apr 13, 2010

Trice rated it:

***1/2 Such a weird, strange experience of a read, but in the end I came to see the journey a bit more clearly. I'm still convinced of the absolute selfishness of the group, Dean at the lead, and a general sense of Sal as a weak actor - he always seemed to need Dean to spur him along, whether it was Dean's idea or his own, and if Dean wasn't around he was driven by circumstances.

But the strong current through the book is one of restlessness and needing to move on, something I under More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 19, 2009

Elle rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2011

Sparrow rated it:

The other day I was talking to someone and he said, “Well, I’m no pie expert . . . Wait! No! I am a pie expert. I am an expert at pie!”

Another person asked, “How did you become a pie expert?”

“One time I ate only pie for an entire week. I was driving across the country with my buddies, and we decided to eat only pie.”

“Like Jack Kerouac in On the Road!” I said.

“Yes! Exactly! That’s exactly what we were doing. We were reading On the Road, and More...

20 comments like (29 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2011

Junio rated it:

I've been doing a lot of commuting and have taken to listening to books on tape. On The Road is read by Matt Dillon, and he does a great job. Turns out he should have been a beat poet.

The text is a pretty good one, it follows a natural story arc, while seeming to be completely happenstance. It follows the relationship between Sal Paradise (Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty, an outcast among the intellectuals whom Sal associates. Dean's early circumstances suggest the terrible mistakes that More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 22, 2007

Bret rated it:

Crammed into the seat of a college lecture hall, I daydreamed about 'Semester at Sea', a floating college campus that carries students from different schools to places like Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Africa etc. etc. I begged and pleaded for enrollment but my penny-pinching father forbid me and refused to fund the trip. I swore that I would break loose the very instant I bubbled in the letter 'C' on my last final exam at Penn State.

At the end of the summer of '97, I roadtr More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jason rated it:

I'm almost 40 and I still love Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation classic On the Road, and screw you if you think otherwise! Oops, whew, sorry about that! It's just that I've had to be a defender of that opinion for so long now, for all the usual reasons: because Kerouac's natural writing style, for example, is one step away from natural parody to begin with, because the Beats were one of the first underground groups to get co-opted by the mainstream media, so there were a lot of parodies that came More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 05, 2007

Ryan rated it:

This novel was quite a change of pace from the last few books I’ve read. For one thing, it has no discernable plot. Sal Paradise, the main character, basically just romps around America with his buddy Dean Moriarty searching for fun and adventure. This book is great for three reasons. Firstly, Dean is one of the most interesting characters in literature, always seemingly high on something or another, digging everything and conning everyone. Second, it may be the only book I’ve ever read tha More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Lilly rated it:

The first 50 pages I was really into the jazzy prose of ON THE ROAD. I never knew it would be so stream-of-conscious-be-boppy.

But then, once I had settled into his unique style, I started reading for the story. Problems arose: I just didn't care anymore. Maybe it's the maturing woman in me, but I found the adventures of this bumbling group of guys slightly annoying. I think when I was 15 or 16 I would have devoured their reckless abandon and their willingness to just go where the More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 11, 2009

Trevor rated it:

There are people, I’m quite prepared to admit, that I am more than happy to spend time with – even an entire week if needs be - as long, that is, as they agree to remain within proper and predictable boundaries. And often those boundaries are pretty well fixed by the covers of the book that I find them in. Look, I don’t mind if you don’t wash or you get so drunk or stoned or both that you find yourself fast asleep hanging onto a toilet to make sure you don’t fall off the world. I don’t care if More...

13 comments like (13 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2011

Nate rated it:

I notice that many of the 4 or 5 star On the Road reviews on here, especially among my contacts, start with the caveat that they're rating based on their first reading of this book as a teen. As such, I definitely should have read this as a teen, rather than picking it up for the first time now. The best aspects would certainly have spoken to me (they still do):
-the exhilaration
-the sense of possibility
-the call of sheer wide-eyed experience
-the exuberance of a sprawli More...

5 comments like (5 people liked it)