On the Road: The Original Scroll
by Jack Kerouac
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| published
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September 6th 2007
by Allen Lane
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| first published
| 1957 |
| binding
| Hardcover |
| isbn
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184614020X
(isbn13: 9781846140204)
|
| ebook |
|
| date added
|
05-10-07
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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 unhinged having to...more
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 unhinged having to deal with the life of being me all hemmed up in Navy uniform and creating little or no art. I didn’t realize the importance of the art thing until later in life. I was just running a muck really, with no balance whatsoever.
It was time for me to leave for sea. Shiny black FBI shoes walking down military barrack hallway. Hair tucked under garrison cover, hands full, I walked passed Devon Ryan’s room. His room was like a diorama. You would walk by, and what was going on inside went on totally and completely without any regards to the rules outside. It was as if it were a neat and tidy exhibit of some other time and place. He and his roommate Greg Harper were a perfect match.
Greg’s favorite workout included one hour of hard weight lifting followed by a shot of scotch. Run three miles whilst smoking one cigarette per mile, without stopping mind you, and then back to his room for a quick one two alone in his room just before Devon got back from machine shop. All this toped off with scotch of course, and all the while smoking non filtered cigarettes, all the while smiling under curly brown locks, leaning back and making off handed remarks about how Harper is a black name. Greg was the kind of guy I always wanted to learn to be. He seemed bulletproof to the ill effects of society or labels or whatever. Greg always seemed wise beyond his years to me.
Then there was Devon. He was Irish. Long Island Irish, which if you ask me is a different kind of Irish altogether, meaning that there is a culture of Irish people living on Long Island and it is their separation from Ireland that binds them together over here. When I first moved up to New York from Georgia, people would ask, “Where are you from?” and I would respond “Georgia.” “No, I mean what are you?” “I don’t know, a RedNeck maybe.” What they were looking for was Welsh, I am welsh, but then again, my being welsh isn’t nearly as important to me as Devon’s being Irish is important to him. He was Irish, and you could tell just by looking at him. Right down to Cheshire grin on round face, Devon was as Irish as any guy I have ever met.
Devon stopped me as I walked past with bags in my hands. “Hey man,” he nodded me over. Smoke filled the room. Greg and Devon each smoked unfiltered cigarettes and just ashed on the floor. They weren’t dirty, in fact their room was as consistently clean a room as you would ever see. They just smoked, ashed, and swept it up. Greg sat in his khaki uniform pants, imitation leather shoes with white socks, and white tee-shirt, smoking a butt and whittleing two dogs fucking out of a piece of balsa or something. Devon, clad in full sweats, and smoking a butt as well, brought me over to his desk. He opened the top drawer, and as usual there was little more than a single pencil and a couple pieces of paper, but this time there was also a book. Oh what a book. He picked it up and studied it for a second. He absorbed it, as if he had to say goodbye. Put his cigarette in his mouth and handed it right over. “Here, this is a book you gotta read. But you have to promise me something, you have to give it to someone else when your done. This is one book that needs to keep moving and touch as many lives as possible.” He made me promise, and he was serious about it. I took him seriously.
I didn’t read it until I was on my second ship. The S/S “Louise” Lykes. I read it during the ocean crossing; I read it three times in a row. It was as much a revelation for me as it was for anyone else in orbit around the philosophy it represents. It didn’t bring me balance though. Oh no, in fact I would say that it threw me more off balance than I already was at that time in my life. Oh well. I didn’t like Devon asked and gave the book to someone else, never reading a word past the three times I read it crossing the Atlantic.
I wanted to be Dean. Who wouldn’t? Dean Moriarty. No limits, no curfew. Bullet proof and on the run, Dean was that guy who was always aware of what went on late at night after I had already cashed in my chips, and somehow by virtue of that had a handle on everything all the time. He’s always cool, no reason not to be when the bases are loaded and Dean’s at bat. We all know he’s gonna knock it out of the park, and don’t bother hitting on the prettiest girl cause he’s gonna knock that out of the park as well. I didn’t have a good idea of what Neal Cassidy looked like at the time, so to me Dean looked like Greg Harper; rough, but with an inner beauty that outshines his scars and imperfections.
Years later, about eleven years, I was working on this pre-positioning ship parked near Ascension Island. For those who are unaware, a pre-positioning ship is one that sits with military cargo loaded and ready to go to wherever it might be needed. I had been used to working on ships on the move, so getting used to the sedentary lifestyle aboard a “pre-po” took some getting used to. I had a habit of going up and talking to the third mate Brett Smith while he was on watch. I sent my emails up on the bridge at the same time every day, and so after a short time I became friends with him and the AB who was on watch with him. They were both good guys, and as luck would have it we each had similar music tastes.
Eventually we got into books we liked. Of course I had to talk all about Salinger. I probably went on and on about Hemmingway, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter Thompson, and so on and so forth in that fashion. Bret was right there with me though. See, I don’t just go on like that when I feel like the person I’m talking to has no clue what I am saying. When I meet someone like him who has read many of the same books like that though, it’s like a burst of conversation, because I mainly enjoy and appreciate these books alone. Finally it came up, “On the Road, there’s a book I need to read. I haven’t read that in so many years.” I don’t think we even talked that much about it. Brett just looked at me and knew my dilemma.
Brett went home not long after that. A week later a package showed up at my door. He had sent me two books. One I wanted to read, and one he wanted me to read. The other book was “Confederacy of Dunces” and I liked it. The other book a vintage paperback copy of “On the Road.” It was Yellow. It smelled like old book. On the cover is a guy making out with a girl on top of an old Chevy with a flat tire and a jug of wine. I was afraid of it at first. I had been on a Tom Robbins kick and just kept avoiding it. Finally I read it. Again. It was entirely different this time. This time I saw something different. This time I knew that I was different.
I’ve since been working my way through the Legend of Duluoz.
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Read in January, 2008
A long long time ago, the summer before I left for college, my sister and I took a train into New York City and while she took a dance class at Steps, I spent a few hours wandering around a Barnes & Noble, some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, gathering up books I thought I ought to read that summer, to better fit in with all the intellectuals I was bound to meet at college in September. You see, I have been having these ambitious good intentions regarding reading books for years ...more
A long long time ago, the summer before I left for college, my sister and I took a train into New York City and while she took a dance class at Steps, I spent a few hours wandering around a Barnes & Noble, some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, gathering up books I thought I ought to read that summer, to better fit in with all the intellectuals I was bound to meet at college in September. You see, I have been having these ambitious good intentions regarding reading books for years now. Anyway, I walked away with a stack of what I deemed to be the necessary texts for a young writer in training: Catch-22, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Love in the Time of Cholera, Nine Stories, and On the Road. I read Catch-22 straight away and burned out halfway through the Marquez (and I have still not finished it... I sadly have never been able to get into Mr. Gabriel Garcia.) I picked through the Nine Stories the following summer, but Portrait took me 3 years and a trip to England. But On the Road took until this past week to complete. I remember opening it once before, balking at the first four or five pages and immediately chucking it back again. But this past week, I re-read those same pages and burned with excitement to read more.
On thing that finally pushed me past the reticence point was something I read in the introduction to Dharma Bums, which I picked up recently in a splurge (I cannot seem to pass up these new Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions, with the Comic Covers!) From reading that introduction two things became clear. First, I was going to have to read On the Road first, because it constantly held the two books in comparison. Second, while Kerouac did write in lengthy, drug-induced hazes - he apparently spent a long time perfecting the art of writing in a more spontaneous way. The intro described how he would sit for hours and practice writing "sketches," essentially little sudden fictions, about whatever happened to be going on around him or in his memory or imagination. This idea really appealed to me at that moment, because I was just trying to get into a experiment where I wrote a new story every week, based on whatever was going on the week before. (I made it 3 weeks, which is something, and turned out one short story I was actually very proud of, and the beginning of what will have to be something much longer, which is what threw me off...)
Anyway, getting back to the book itself - I was incredibly sucked in this time around. Initially I suffered under the false impression that the book was about one cross-country voyage, wherein it is about a period of many wanderings over the course of many years. I found myself watching with joy as he got sucked into the world of "the road." The hitchhiking life is so new that it seems (perhaps due to his editing and compositing of events) that there are only a few hundred people running around the country doing this at the time, and they all seem to know one another, or know of one another. What comes out is a whole culture full of little stories and vignettes - who fought who in a bar outside of St. Louis and why... how so-and-so got his nickname... etc. (I'd give more specific examples, but I don't have the book with me at the moment.) And, true to life, the excitement never lasts very long, is always quickly followed by awkwardness and squabbling and the sense that something greater is happening somewhere else and it's time to move on and find the next big thing. It really did make me nostalgic for a whole lifestyle that I never knew existed before and that does not, at least in terms of real hitchhiking, exist anymore. I knew a hundred writers, or would-be-writers, in college who held Kerouac and Neal Cassady up as legends and wanted to live (or write) in the same free-wheeling style - I remember one story about a girl who meets (the ghost of?) Jack Kerouac in a coffee shop in the midwest somewhere... though I am guilty of once writing a short story about having a similar encounter with JD Salinger... or actually with a girl that inspired his story For Esme With Love and Squalor, but anyway - and the more pale imitations I encountered, the more I think I held it against the original. Especially when his originality was the absolute centerpiece of his appeal.
Writing about the fantastically quirky souls of real people is not easy - it takes someone with real talent to capture whatever it is that makes them original without turning them into a walking cliche. I know I've tried to do it, with varying success, and it's one of the things that makes writing interesting to me. My fiance took a class where a Professor spoke of a writer as being 'the Sacred Bard' - someone with the gift of observation and of translating those observations onto a page, in such a way that a reader feels they have observed it themselves. Kerouac fills this position well in On The Road - recognizing often that he is hero-worshiping Moriarty/Cassady and that he, himself can't hold a candle to the uniqueness of his companion. The most exciting thread in the book, by far, is the tragic unraveling of Moriarty - the slow fizzling out of this anti-hero and you feel the same pains that Kerouac feels in observing it all....less
bookshelves:
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Read in January, 2000
recommends it for:
fourteen-year-old assholes
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 itself is fairl...more
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 itself is fairly innocuous -- this book is so awful it's actually offensive, and even incredibly damaging.
I'd be lying if I said there aren't parts of this book that're so bad they're good -- good as in morbidly fascinating, in the manner of advanced-stage syphilis slides from seventh-grade health class. Keroac's ode to the sad-eyed Negro is actually an incredible, incredible example of.... something I'm glad has been typed. For the record. So we can all see it clearly, and KNOW.
Please don't get me wrong! My disproportionately massive loathing for Jack Kerouac has zero to do with his unenlightened racial views. I mean, it was written in the fifties, and anyway, it's great that he was able to articulate these ideas so honestly. No, the real reason I hate this book so much is that it established a deeply retarded model of European-American male coolness that continues to plague our culture today.
I could go into a lot more depth on this topic, but it's come to my attention that I've been using my horrible addiction to Bookster to avoid the many obligations and responsiblities of my daily life, to which I should now return. So, in closing: this book SUCKS. This book is UNBELIEVABLY TERRIBLE. And for that very reason, especially considering its serious and detrimental impact on western civilization, I definitely recommend that you read it, if you have not suffered that grave misfortune already....less
This book was very unique with a great writing style and incredibly detailed. I enjoyed every single description. It was so full of colorful words and country slang so proper and fitting to the theme and characters. This marvelous piece of work tells the story of two men, Sal and Dean . Sal is a New York City boy who is a very quiet, and discreet writer eager to see the world, yet he´s not daring enough to do so. He meets Dean through friends in the summer of `47. Sal makes Dean look like this...more
This book was very unique with a great writing style and incredibly detailed. I enjoyed every single description. It was so full of colorful words and country slang so proper and fitting to the theme and characters. This marvelous piece of work tells the story of two men, Sal and Dean . Sal is a New York City boy who is a very quiet, and discreet writer eager to see the world, yet he´s not daring enough to do so. He meets Dean through friends in the summer of `47. Sal makes Dean look like this smart, dreamy, woman-loving, Mid-Western character who he looks up to very much. Sal is so intrigued by this original character and his friends that he decides to pack his bags and cross the whole country to see Dean to Denver and continue all the way to the West Coast alongside his new buddy. He encounters many obstacles and meets new friends which he talks about with deep detail. One can see as Sal changes from that quiet, young, peaceful writer into a more social and extroverted being. This tale is about friendship, finding one´s self and life on the road. The whole story was inspired on real life events of the author Jack Kerouac while he lived life on the road in the late 1940´s. This book takes many twists and changes as we see the lives of Sal and Dean progress though time. The majority of their adventures on the road involve casual sex, drug use, and wreckless behavior from all the characters in the story as they try hard to find love, happiness and the need to live life to its fullest, doing so by going on the road . This was piece of literature that changed my perspective on many things and opened up my mind to what others experiment and what life on the road was like in those years of madness.
ESPAÑOL
En el camino de Jack Kerouac
Este libro es único con un gran estilo de escritura e increíblemente detallado. Gocé de cada descripción. Esta tan lleno de palabras coloridas y de jerga del país tan apropiada y apropiada para el tema y a los personajes. Esta pieza de escritura tan maravillosa cuenta la historia de dos hombres, Sal y Dean. Sal es un muchacho de New York City que es un muy reservado, un escritor discreto e impaciente ver el mundo, pero no es tan atrevido como para hacerlo. Él conoce a Dean a través de unos amigos en el verano del `47. A los ojos de Sal, Dean es atrevido, inteligente y mujeriego y Sal lo admira mucho. Sal esta tan cautivado por este pérsonaje tan original y sus amigos que él decide empacar sus cosas y cruzar el país entero para ver a Dean a Denver y para continuar hasta el final a la costa del oeste junto a su nuevo compinche. Él se encuentra con muchos obstáculos y hace nuevos amigos de los que habla en detalle. Uno puede ver como Sal cambia de ese muchacho introvertido, un más social y extroverted ser. Este cuento es sobre amistad, encontrarse a uno mismo y de la vida en el camino. La historia entera fue inspirada en los acontecimientos de la vida del autor Jack Kerouac mientras que él vivió parte de su vida en el camino los años ´40. Este libro toma muchas vueltas y describe muchos cambios mientras que vemos las vidas de Sal al y Dean progresar y seguir sus cursos. La mayoría de sus aventuras en el camino implica el sexo ocasional, el uso de droga, y el comportamiento desenfrenado de todos los personajes en la historia y como intentan encontrar el amor, la felicidad y la necesidad de vivir la vida plenamente, mientras que viajan en el camino. Ésta pieza de literatura cambió mi perspectiva en muchas cosas y abrió mi mente a lo que experimentan otros y a lcomo la vida en el camino era en esos años de locura.
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Read in March, 2008
When I was in elementary school, our playground was separated from I-10 by just a few large pine trees and a very large fence. Occasionally, we would all play by that fence and at one point some kid told me that the road on the other side of the fence could take me from Tallahassee all the way to Los Angeles. Even then, I was intrigued.
Later, when I was 16, I was the proud owner of a 1988 Honda Civic, champagne in color. I somehow convinced my parents to let me go on various trips with th...more
When I was in elementary school, our playground was separated from I-10 by just a few large pine trees and a very large fence. Occasionally, we would all play by that fence and at one point some kid told me that the road on the other side of the fence could take me from Tallahassee all the way to Los Angeles. Even then, I was intrigued.
Later, when I was 16, I was the proud owner of a 1988 Honda Civic, champagne in color. I somehow convinced my parents to let me go on various trips with that rather nondescript, though reliable car that I loved, all throughout the State of Florida and to such awesome locales as Atlanta, New Orleans, etc. It was awesome. Something about being young and having no responsibilities and the feel of the open road - it just doesn’t get much better.
I also love the American West. When we would travel to the West on family vacations, I loved sitting in the backseat looking out the window and admiring the landscape that was so very different from my Florida home. There is a feeling in being out there that is so different than life here on the East Coast. Big skies and big vistas and more temperate summers, even in Texas, it is all just different and enticing. If money or commitments were no object, I think I would find myself living in the great big openness of Nevada or Arizona or even western Texas if I had my druthers.
Anyway, like all red blooded Americans, I have been on many a road trip. The thing is, though, it rarely lives up to the expectations. Even though I had never read the book, I always wanted the experience that Sal Paradise had in meeting great characters and being with different women and just having a great time seeing incredible jazz musicians at the coolest bars and clubs, but it never happened. When you are driving on the interstate the country goes by so fast that you really don’t get to know the soul of a place. The endless strip malls and major chain restaurants are the same everywhere. Unless you take a lot more time than initially planned to get to your destination, Des Moines feels a lot to me like Orlando - and I don’t mean that as a compliment. People I am with don’t want to stay in the places with character, but instead like major chain hotels with the same major chain complimentary breakfasts and the exact same room décor from Flagstaff to Florida. Plus, I am nothing if not practical and really I am nothing like Dean Moriarty or even Sal Paradise.
I digress, though, to note that I thought the book was very good. Perhaps if I had read it when I was 16 instead of 31, it would have been much more revolutionary. Hard not to admire the unique stream of consciousness style and the debt that other works of the canon like “Fear and Loathing” owe to this book. I will concur with the criticism that the book is not as heavy on plot as other masterpieces and even some of the characters, like Sal and Dean, are not that sympathetic. I won't even reference the obvious misogynist tones in the book. Some of the language and scenes of sex and drugs, no doubt quite shocking in the 1950s, are not nearly as shocking now. All that said; the scenes set on the open road and in the jazz clubs are pretty darn awesome. Even though he is pretty tough to love, there is no denying that Dean Moriarty is kinda cool.
All in all, this book is the undisputed template for the travel book and as such, it is right to give it appropriate deference. It didn’t change my life, but I can imagine it might’ve if I read it at another time.
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Read in August, 2005
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 from it for...more
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 from it for a while. While I thought that it would be a rollicking tale of freedom and glory, I found that all of Dean's conquests were tainted by the fact that he had to take advantage of other people every step of the way. He was a hugely entertaining character, but would have been a terrible friend, lover, or even acquaintance. From the women he married to gas station attendents, right down to Sal Paradise himself, Dean drained everything that he was right out of other people, and it eventually ruined him. It left him beat...not heart beating exhilarated, but beat up, dead beat and alone. Once I stepped back a little from the awe at Dean's greatness, this book was really sad, and it caused me to put away that romanticism for a while.
Now, 2 years later, though, On the Road is coming back to me full on. I didn't escape the total wonder at the Beats and the road. I have been on the road myself for the last 2 months and have a long way to go before I get back home, and I am constantly aware that the the way was paved by Kerouac and the rest of the crazy geniuses of his generation. The road is every bit as romantic as Sal Paradise made it out to be, and its glory far out weighs the short comings of Dean as a friend. I mean, the road is a lot like Dean, it takes a lot out of you, but you get addicted to it and obsessed with it and can't let it go, and I don't think there's any other way about it. I am in love with America for the first time. Now that I've seen it, driven across and up and down, around and over America, I find it sublime and incredible. I think that Kerouac and his friends might've been the first to see that. Maybe not. Maybe they are just part of all of American history...they translated the world of Western expansion and canvas covered wagons into the way of the modern world. America is something to dream about. It is worthy every exuberant and formerly offensive "I'm proud" sticker that's plastered on the back of a pick up truck. And Kerouac saw that first hand. So, it seems, that there is a certain tragedy in this book, but that it is less important than the unavoidable glory that you come to associate with the road and freedom after following these guys on their crazy adventure. I think this book should be read by everyone who wants to know about America....less
Read in January, 2000
recommends it for:
high school + college grads
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 roadtripped fr...more
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 roadtripped from Connecticut to the West Coast in an '89 Ford Escort Wagon. My travelling partner was 'Styles'(I honestly can't remember his real name), a breakdancer from the British Channel islands who worked with me as a summer camp counselor after my college graduation in May. He wanted to see the country after being cooped up in a swampy, mosquito infested summer camp in the middle of the woods in Connecticut--basically a dump for neglected rich kids on ritalin. We had just been fired from the camp for drinking booze on our overnight (the first and only time we drank on the premises), with our campers deep-sleeping in a cabin nearby our celebratory, raging bonfire. Some ultra-conservative counselor snitched on us after I stumbled into the girls quarters to invite them to our little party. With my fraternity bonds still intact apparantly, my pecker did all the talking.
Anyway, we woke up the next morning without jobs and fled the director's meeting room for the Wild West. Styles brought a videorecorder so he could showcase his American adventure to friends and family back home, to all the 'blokes' and 'birds'. Our first stop was the Grand Canyon. Hours away from our destination, dark skies crept in so we slept for a couple hours in the car, too broke to afford a hotel room. We woke up to the Arizona sunrise, glowing beet red against a foreground marked by shadows of scattered boulders. I never felt so awake on two hours sleep. We drove onward toward the Canyon.
When I first gazed over the Grand Canyon, I felt strangly aware, for the first time in my life, of the presence of the native tribes who still live among us and consider the earth more of a home than we ever will: pure, raw, undisturbed and wild, yet accomodating. That night, we pitched tent in the Grand Canyon's state park campground and survived an extremely windy ice storm that nearly tore the stakes of my Coleman 3-man tent clear out of the sandy floor. The gusts roared through the vinyl fabric and burrowed into our ears, but we snored like babies, exhausted from seemingly endless hours of driving without sleep.
On to the beaches of Los Angeles, starting with Venice and then Malibu and Laguna. 'Styles' was sure to take plenty of footage of all the American 'birds' on the beach. Every few seconds he'd turn to me with his jaw dropped, as if he suspected that I knew of this paradise all along but preferred to stay trapped in a musty cabin, nagging 8 year olds to brush their teeth before 'lights out'.
"On The Road" brings me back to a time when I wanted to do everything before I was sure what I really want to do. I just took off and stopped when I couldn't go any longer but continued as soon as I could not bear to sit still another moment. Jack Kerouac captures the spirit of youth in "On The Road" and reminds me how incredible life can feel when I'm not busy making plans.
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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 th...more
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-new-girlfriend Dina upon her insistence that it was nothing short of amazing. This was also the first time I'd heard Neil Young's Harvest in its entirety. I'd prefer not to downplay any of this in terms of shaping who I became over the next few years, and for that matter, who I am now.
All of this ancillary detail and admitted nostalgia probably shouldn't have anything to do with my assessment of the book. I did, after all, read it at the absolute "perfect" time: away from home, "discovering myself," blah blah blah. But you know what? I don't care how trite it was, and maybe still is. This book knocked it out of the fucking park for me. And so what if millions of kids the same age with the same sort of background enjoyed the same sort of "spiritual" experience with the book? I didn't know that at the time. All I knew of Jack Kerouac was his picture on the cover of the book.
How much did On the Road have to do with deciding not to go to school in New England but rather staying in Pittsburgh and going to a "city school"? How much did it have to do with writing becoming my immediate, absolute focus? How much did it have to do with that girl who lent it to me, who I am still in love with today? I don't know. What I do know is that it's all part of that same package, and I couldn't remove it if I tried. And why would I want to? To portray some ill-advised disaffected post-college stance that the book just ain't that good? I don't have time for that.
If this seems defensive, or even off topic, it's because I've had to defend this book so many times. What's the point in discussing narrative structure or character development when my reaction to this book was so much more than a mere academic appreciation, when it was downright visceral? To wit, Kerouac was the wild west gunslinger staring down a group of bad guys, his finger lightly tapping his pistol; I was the little boy at home, watching him on TV with a plastic cowboy hat on my head. Do you think I'm going to waste time talking about the cinematography?
That's not to say I think the book is without substance or can't be appreciated academically. In fact, it would make for an even longer review trying to describe these. My point is that they seem too after-the-fact. It's a wonderful novel, brimming with brilliance, and deserving of the hype.
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Read in July, 2008
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 careers of Allan...more
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 careers of Allan Ginsburg and William Burroughs. Kerouac's own muse was a sexy, reputedly well-hung man named Neal Cassady. (Kerouac was no slouch either – they made a handsome duo.) Kerouac and Ginsburg met Cassady while they attended Columbia University – Cassady didn't attend - in the late 1940s.
On the Road is a stream-of-conscious accounting of Kerouac's several aimless wanderings with Cassady. It's listed as fiction, but most people agree it's thinly veiled fact. Jack Kerouac wrote on a single long scroll of paper a rambling account of their infidelities, meanderings, drug use, bigamy, drinking, and general lawlessness. It is am interesting novel about post-WWII men lacking a frontier to conquer. It is about ennui, aimlessness, and the destructive ends that seeking adventure and ansers can lead you to. It is also about men making their own odyssey, and it has inspired generations of people to take to travel, to trust the kindness of the road without any destination in mind.
In short, it's a self-destructive tome that many people love for its freewheeling spirit, ignoring its self-destructiveness. I am not dismissing the fun Kerouac and Cassady, but I am making sure I also acknowledge their consequences, both of them dying before they reached the age of fifty. Cassady died at 42 from an apparent overdose of Seconal, and Kerouac died at 47 of cirrosis from heavy drinking.
I think the fascination for me is how people let themselves come to such ends. Some might say it is the sexy, dangerous devil in Cassady that somehow tempts others like Kerouac into ablative behavior. I think that the seeds of self-obliteration lie dormant in the person waiting for a Cassady or a bottle or a drug to come along and start the process. It's going to happen; the cause is unimportant. It happened with Verlaine and Rimbaud, it happened with Shelley and Byron. But it's also happened with Garland and studio-supplied drugs, Belushi and cocaine, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence and a belt around the neck...
But this reductive, highwire lifestyle also encouraged Kerouac to invent a new way of writing, a voice that captured a new way of looking at the world and redefined a generation. His monologue of adventure across America several times and down into Mexico is hypnotic in its power to bring you along for the ride. It inspired so many others, not the least of which were Hunter S. Thompson and Jim Morrison – self-destructive people in their own right , but also, people who have created some incredible art.
And it all starts with a sexy devil who steals a car and says, "Hey, let's go to San Francisco."
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Jack Kerouac’s On the Road doesn’t seem like a particularly easy novel to identify with. On one hand, it has themes that everyone can relate to: escapism, self-discovery, and personal growth. On the other hand, Kerouac wrote something very reactionary to what his surroundings were at the time; this novel is seen as a representation of the Beat Generation, an era where youths yearned for a non-conformist counterculture and an escape from the oppression of authority. Yet, in the end, i...more
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road doesn’t seem like a particularly easy novel to identify with. On one hand, it has themes that everyone can relate to: escapism, self-discovery, and personal growth. On the other hand, Kerouac wrote something very reactionary to what his surroundings were at the time; this novel is seen as a representation of the Beat Generation, an era where youths yearned for a non-conformist counterculture and an escape from the oppression of authority. Yet, in the end, it is those underlying themes that resonate through to the reader, easily identifiable no matter what generation they are from.
The book is an autobiographical account of the road trips that Kerouac and his friends took around the late forties. Spontaneously, his fictional doppelganger Sal Paradise decides to experience the world, inspired by his cultured friend Dean Moriarty. While Dean is intelligent, he doesn’t appreciate school for its installation of boring tediousness in students. Sal realizes that school can only teach you so much, and so he embarks on a journey to fulfill himself and to discover the world.
What makes the novel so great is the inperfectness and relatibility of its characters. Sal is intelligent, thoughtful and a good person, but he is lazy, unfocused, and rejects commitment. He is so much more relatable to readers with his flaws intact, and in turn it is much easier to believe his desire to break free from the binds of society.
Dean is much less relatable, but his strength as a character lies in his rejection of the commonplace. He strives constantly for adventure, not so much to find himself like Sal, but just for the sake if having one. Dean actually works better as a cariacture of the eccentric, rebellious travler, because his entire essence is built upon his opposoiton to reality. As Kerouac wrote, his type of person is “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 common place thing, but burn burn burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars”.
The Beat Generation was a time in American history that was chaotic, revolutionary, and influential. Of course, the novel captures that well. But what defines On the Road is not its cultural commentary, but its timeless themes of escape and discovery, its fantastic yet relatable characters, and its honesty. While I may never have experiences like the ones in this novel, I connect with it moreso than any other book I have ever read.
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Read in January, 2002
recommends it for:
people with long hair.
"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 getting i...more
"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 getting into it. I could see it happening. I wanted to see myself driving back and forth across the country in the late 40s, early 50s (Is that when it took place? It's been awhile since I read it... and I can't say it all stuck with me). Then this happened.
There I was, minding my own business, reading my book, selling Sprites to anyone that wanted one, and this tiny, scrawny, long-haired, belt studded, black wearing hippie/cool/emo/rocker dude walks up to me and starts to talk to me about how he LOVED ON THE ROAD.
Really? Is this the target audience? Is it that cool to read Kerouac? Snap, snap daddio.
I guess so. I did like it while reading it. But since then, time has passed for me. And honestly, as more stuff goes into the brain, more and more of On The Road has been forgotten. Thus I guess it doesn't stand the test of time. Then again... I've never driven across the country, so maybe one needs that experience in order to... no wait, wait, I have driven across the country. Hmm... I've never listened to jazz in San Francisco? Listen: let me put it like this, reading On The Road is sort of like being a year into college, and you're having fun, and you're meeting new people, but you miss your old friends, and you miss the easy school assignments, and how little responsibility you had to deal with. You had this faux sense of happy nostolgia. Then you get a few years older, and then you're thinking, "No way in hell would I ever go back to high school, I don't care how hot Sunny Crane was, she's definately not worth going back for, especially if I have to sit through another damn calculus class."
On The Road: Sure Sunny Crane was hot in high school, but is she hot now? Don't know, don't really care to find out, cause there are other things on my mind....less
bookshelves:
avoid-like-aids
Read in June, 2008
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...more
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 pilgrimage west, alas any eventual voyage will lack the thrilling sense of discovery (of course also safe from the considerable threats) evoked in the Ambrose text. Unfortunately, after reading Kerouac's book, depicting a relatively worthless industrial landscape, I am reminded of the very real human egotism driving behavior and far less enthusiastic for far-flung ventures.
The book's common thread seems to be characters who will travel thousands of miles in search of a hamburger. Traveling to major urban cities leaves these restless souls unsatisfied until the climatic trip to Mexico, treated reverentially in a sharp contrast from the detachment associated with America. F'n Mexico?! An orgiastic trip to a Mexican brothel where the narrator leers at a teenager is the novel's spiritual apex, a stirring reminder of the potential for human depravity but a complete disappointment for readers attempting to understand Kerouac's considerable legacy. The narrator bizarrely swoons over companion Dean Mortiary epitomize unbridled living but whose M.O. depends on leeching from others and fathering children out of wedlock. References to Dean's own loser father permit sympathy for the man, but as an iconic figure he was shockingly repellent, just one in the litany of uninteresting characters peppering the novel.
Readers desiring a truly fresh perspective should just buy some psyclobin mushrooms and avoid the time you would otherwise waste reading this book. Far from understanding the genesis of the beat generation, I read Kerouac craft a self-indulgent justification for aimless wandering and its pitiable virtues. ...less
recommended to Will by:
The one and only Spoon.
recommends it for:
The ones who left.
Without question, one of the single most influential books I have ever read, and probably my all time favorite.
I picked up a copy of what I consider to be one of the top 5 contenders for "The Great American Novel" in London, ironically. But perhaps because I was so far from home, the lyrics of Kerouac's writing were that much more poignant for me. Over the years I've read endless pontifications on whether this novel is triumph or trash, what his motivation was, whether he wrote it...more
Without question, one of the single most influential books I have ever read, and probably my all time favorite.
I picked up a copy of what I consider to be one of the top 5 contenders for "The Great American Novel" in London, ironically. But perhaps because I was so far from home, the lyrics of Kerouac's writing were that much more poignant for me. Over the years I've read endless pontifications on whether this novel is triumph or trash, what his motivation was, whether he wrote it or his editors wrote it, etc., etc.
In the end, it's a moot point to argue whether Van Goh was the creator of his artwork, or the vessel by which it traveled from one world to another. It makes no difference. His work simply is. It is here, and it no less fabulous, no less relevant, because of how it arrived. So then, with Jack Kerouac's masterwork, On the Road.
With a lyrical quality that I have yet to discover to such an extent in any other author, On the Road simply sings its message of wanderlust and the longing for a sense of home and place. The mood of the audience certainly makes a difference in the success of any book's message. And the fact that I was a young twenty-something, abroad for the first time and realizing that the world was out there waiting for me all along, much bigger than I had been led to believe, made me a prime target for On the Road.
But the book has persisted over the years, through generations whose childhoods and promises of adulthood could not stand in starker contrast to those of Kerouac and his contemporaries. And still we read it. And still we cling to it. Perhaps it has something to do with the novel's unashamed romanticizing of the itinerant life, riding the rails, taking migrant work, eating what feels familiar, never knowing what or where tomorrow will bring you. Maybe we're all a little jealous of the freedom he seems to feel in picking up and leaving, in search of home.
There are those of us who stay, and those of us who leave. The ones who left, you know who you are. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
This is your book. ...less
Read in May, 2008
Jack Kerouac
On The Road
New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1955
254 pp. $3.50
0-451-1-3118-5
Book Review
Decades before the righteous rebellions of the sixties, a cultural revolution known as the “beat" movement shook middle class America to its core by rejecting traditional views and values. This insurrection was headed by writers and artist such as Jack Kerouac, who promoted freedom and enlightenment by any means possible. Kerouac’s autobiography, “On the Road,” breaks the b...more
Jack Kerouac
On The Road
New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1955
254 pp. $3.50
0-451-1-3118-5
Book Review
Decades before the righteous rebellions of the sixties, a cultural revolution known as the “beat" movement shook middle class America to its core by rejecting traditional views and values. This insurrection was headed by writers and artist such as Jack Kerouac, who promoted freedom and enlightenment by any means possible. Kerouac’s autobiography, “On the Road,” breaks the black and white constrains of the forties and brings the beat generation into Technicolor.
The theme of ”On the Road” is the narrator’s struggle for freedom and self-discovery as he races from coast to coast drinking, experimenting with drugs, and partying as he pleases with out any tethers to a single relationship. From the start of the novel, Sal Paradise, the narrator, believes that the unstructured lifestyle of a drifter is the only method to reach enlightenment and, “’somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me’”. So, as the novel progresses, Sal learns from his aimless wandering to live life to the fullest rather than for the sake of breathing, and to live “in the now.”
Sal’s unrestrained lifestyle is reflected in the book’s revolutionary ‘stream of consciousness’ writing style, which includes paragraph-long run-on sentences, fragments, and poetry randomly dispersed throughout. These seemingly grammatical errors defied the traditional means of writing and allowed Kerouac to pen his saga with no limitations but the margins of the paper. With his mutinous method to writing, Kerouac also creates a different plot, in which there is no climax, only the steady stream of anticipated unanticipated behavior.
This highly unorthodox book marked the end of traditional writing and, paved the way for fresher, more creative literature. Jack Kerouac’s messages still resonate today as individuals find their own road to self discovery.
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Read in January, 2002
I don't really remember when I finally got around to reading this book, but it's kind of a let-down. And I think it's an important book because of that. I'm going to stick with my 3-star review, because I think the book suffers from Kerouac's refusal to edit the manuscript. But my problems with/favorite parts about it are much more personal. Everyone is really big on saying "oh man! you've gotta read on the road! it'll change your life! it really makes you want to see the country!"...more
I don't really remember when I finally got around to reading this book, but it's kind of a let-down. And I think it's an important book because of that. I'm going to stick with my 3-star review, because I think the book suffers from Kerouac's refusal to edit the manuscript. But my problems with/favorite parts about it are much more personal. Everyone is really big on saying "oh man! you've gotta read on the road! it'll change your life! it really makes you want to see the country!" so on and so fourth. If you read this book, and then go on a road trip, or vice versa, or read it WHILE on a road trip, you will be horribly, incredibly let down. Not to say that anyone who's ever read this book, now 50 years old, has thought of it as some kind of national guidebook, but seriously. There are no more rideshares; no pie & coffee - it's all identical mini-malls, Starbucks, Best Buy and other topics totally unsuitable for a book review. It's a tirade I don't really feel like diddling with at the moment. Anyway, the book portrays a country that no longer exists, and I think while it's great to try to understand that, it's really hard to grasp in any meaningful way. It's like watching films like "Marty,"or "The Apartment." I get that they're "great" movies, but they offer nothing for me. I'm so far removed from the times and places that made those things vital, that they lose considerable value to me. They become a dead language. It's like reading old Asimov once the actual technology has surpassed his fictional vision. You might get things out of it, but there are new stories to be told. But just like those things, I struggle with on the one hand feeling totally removed, to finding an impetus in the writing to want things around me to be different. My recommendation is to read "the Beach" by Alex Garland, or honestly, other Kerouac.
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
Those who like to read the words "mad" and "sad" 10 times on every page.
Jack Kerouac’s <On The Road> is just like Kurt Cobain’s (from the grunge-band Nirvana) song “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Both persons are haled as heroes for their influence on the new generation. <On The Road> and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” were both catchy in their own way and they didn’t abide by the rules of that day. Both were idiots who died young because of idiotic lifestyles. What is the deal? Why is it so popular to look up to the people who are famous as incredib...more
Jack Kerouac’s <On The Road> is just like Kurt Cobain’s (from the grunge-band Nirvana) song “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Both persons are haled as heroes for their influence on 
