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On the Road

(Duluoz Legend)

Jack Kerouac,

Ann Charters (Introduction)

3.62 · Rating details · 342,771 ratings · 14,736 reviews

On The Road swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat. Now recognized as a modern classic, Kerouac's American Dream is nearer that of Walt Whitman than F. Scott Fitzgerald's, and the narrative goes racing towards the sunset ...more

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Paperback, Penguin Modern Classics, 281 pages

Published February 24th 2000 by Penguin Books (first published September 5th 1957)

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Average rating 3.62 ·

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· 342,771 ratings · 14,736 reviews

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Sep 29, 2007 Jessica rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: fourteen-year-old assholes

Shelves: bad-reads, dicklits

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 -- thi ...more

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Apr 24, 2007 Adam rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

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-class, ...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews

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.

I probably read this book before most of you were born.

So there!

Wouldn' ...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Samadrita rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: white heterosexual males

Shelves: in-by-about-america, 1001-and-more, loathed-this-book, not-worth-it, timeless-classics

This is the book which has given me anxiety attacks on sleepless nights.
This is the book which has glared at me from its high pedestal of classical importance in an effort to browbeat me into finally finishing it.
And this is that book which has shamed me into feigning an air of ignorance every time I browsed any of the countless 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die lists.

Yes Jack Kerouac, you have tormented me for the past 3 years and every day I couldn't summon the strength to open another page o ...more

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Jun 09, 2007 Jahn Sood rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 whil 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. ...more

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Apr 21, 2020 Lala BooksandLala rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Read for an Aries inspired vlog https://youtu.be/voSrsRnGL68 ...more

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Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-20th-c, novels, fiction, beat-lit, favorites

Kerouac's masterpiece breathes youth and vigor for the duration and created the American bohemian "beat" lifestyle which has been the subject of innumerable subsequent books, songs, and movies. I have read this at least two or three times and always feel a bit breathless and invigorated because of the restlessness of the text and the vibrance of the characters. There was an extraordinary exhibit at the Pompidou Center earlier this year where the original draft in Kerouac's handwriting was laid o ...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Adam rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1900-1969, prose

Although the ideas hold a certain appeal, this book is ultimately just a half-assed justification of some pretty stupid, self-destructive, irresponsible, and juvenile tendencies and attitudes, the end result of which is a validation of being a deadbeat loser, a perpetual child. This validation is dressed up as a celebration of freedom etc.

As literary art, stylistically, the book is pretty bad. The analogies to bebop or even free jazz are misguided. That improvisation was by talented musicians, Although the ideas hold a certain appeal, this book is ultimately just a half-assed justification of some pretty stupid, self-destructive, irresponsible, and juvenile tendencies and attitudes, the end result of which is a validation of being a deadbeat loser, a perpetual child. This validation is dressed up as a celebration of freedom etc.

As literary art, stylistically, the book is pretty bad. The analogies to bebop or even free jazz are misguided. That improvisation was by talented musicians, or at least musicians who understood music, had a remarkable ear. Kerouac is just rambling and he thinks that qualifies as the literary equivalent of jazz improv. It doesn't. It's just tiresome. DeLillo's prose is an example of prose that more accurately can be described as analogous to bebop.

I'm not going to hold it against anyone that they like this book. I know that it influenced some important and serious artists, who were many times Kerouac's superiors. I understand its appeal, and even its historical importance. But reading it today, and not being 16 anymore, it really is a bit of a joke.

Its importance in itself, too, has faded. The Beats live on as myth that surpasses, for the most part, their actual output in both resonance and quality. Moreover, their myth has been adapted, especially in popular music, so well that it has rendered a lot of their actual work trivial, especially the lesser Beats (in terms of talent), eg. Kerouac. Nobody needs to read On the Road anymore, and all it's going to do is perpetuate some pretty idiotic notions we already have enough of, and lead to a lot of ripoffs of ripoffs of Whitman thinking their poetry is important and crowding bars I don't want to have to see them at.

Just look at contemporary literature, the voices we have, the stuff that's selling well on the literary market. A lot of that stuff is just workshop fiction that isn't going to last long in particular well-regard, but a lot of it is brilliant stuff, and far more literate, intelligent, and interesting than what this guy had to offer.

This book's time is up. Aside from youth clinging to a false nostalgia for a nonexistent time and place and crowd, its appeal is pretty much done too. ...more

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May 27, 2011 Fabian rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Herein lies that gnarly root of the all-American Sense of Entitlement. Coupling this with "Huck Finn" as THE quintessential American Novel is One Enormous mistake: Twain at least entertains, at least follows through with his intention, with his American take on the Quixotean legend; Kerouac might just be the biggest literary quack of the 20th century! The book is awkward, structured not as ONE single trip, but composed of a few coast-to-coast coastings, all having to do with this overused motif. ...more

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Feb 13, 2019 Mark Lawrence rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I think this book, which launched Kerouac's career and gave him insta-fame, has to be seen as a product of its time.

I found it a chore to read, a long dull boast about a series of road trips. It's populated by vacuous largely despicable alcoholics with zero impulse control and an unshakeable belief that they are deeply profound observers of the human condition.

One saving grace of the book is that Kerouac has an unusual writing style with a strong voice that he uses well, especially when describi ...more

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Jan 24, 2017 Katerina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Katerina by: Eliasdgian

Shelves: classics, 2017-reads

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”

I am not really into classics.
I always preferred the fantasy genre, due to an innate escapism, a vivid imagination and a constant longing for magic. But as you may tell, I didn't cast spells while reading On the Road. I didn't climb the dark wizard's tower, nor heard prophecies whispered in the dark. I set my sword aside for a while, and hushed my heart's desire to experience passionate romances. After a dear frie ...more

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Mar 08, 2009 Meredith Holley rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Meredith by: Erica

Shelves: memoir-biography

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 we decided he was so smart when he realized pie is the ...more

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Apr 16, 2007 karen rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: books-everyone-loves-but-me

in september, this book will turn sixty years old! while i do not care for it personally, and the celebration of a couple of self-satisfied pseudo-intellectual doofuses and their buffet-style spirituality traveling across the country, leaving a number of pregnancies in their wake and exploiting underage mexican prostitutes makes me wonder why this book endures, endure it does. so i have made a road trip booklist with less ickiness and more cannibalism. enjoy!

https://www.rifflebooks.com/list/2374 ...more

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Feb 03, 2017 Matthew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, library, classic, 2017

This was a 4 star book based on what it represents, the history of the genre, and my enjoyment of travel.

From the get go, this is a stream of consciousness romp through North America. It seems like almost every city in the United States is mentioned at least once as Sal Paradise tells of his travels, the people he meets, those who join him, and his wild vagabond companion Dean Moriarity. I don't feel like the style of this book will appeal to everyone and I can easily see many losing interest p This was a 4 star book based on what it represents, the history of the genre, and my enjoyment of travel.

From the get go, this is a stream of consciousness romp through North America. It seems like almost every city in the United States is mentioned at least once as Sal Paradise tells of his travels, the people he meets, those who join him, and his wild vagabond companion Dean Moriarity. I don't feel like the style of this book will appeal to everyone and I can easily see many losing interest part way in. But, if you are a fan of travelling in America, a scholar of literary genres, a hipster, and/or grew up in the 50s travelling the great American highways before interstates, you will find something in here for you.

There is also a lot of jazz influence in the writing. Several times the writing comes to a stop for an onomatopoedic side trip to a jazz club. This was especially interesting as I was listening to the audio.

Dean Moriarity - if nothing else, this book is worth it for Dean. The fact that Dean was based on a real person (Kerouac's friend Neal Cassady) makes his hijinks and destructive personality even more interesting. I am sure that he is a character that is idolized by some who read this, which is a bit scary! (Reminds me of those who idolize Alexander Supertramp from Into the Wild)

An interesting thing that happened while listening to this is twice I thought "this is reminding me of Hemingway" and less than a minute later, Hemingway is mentioned. It really reminded me of The Sun Also Rises and Wkipedia mentions that Kerouac did intentionally use the style of that book for On The Road.

Finally, as mentioned above, Kerouac based this on his life While listed as fiction, up until the final draft, the main characters had real names. The draft the Kerouac used was on long scroll without formatting or paragraph breaks. I mentioned the jazz influence and Kerouac apparently used the scroll in this way to mimic improvisational jazz. Sometimes the scroll can be seen on display - see photo below:

All in all a very interesting book with very interesting characters and a very interesting history. ...more

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Sep 12, 2010 Mike Puma rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ugh, 2010

I tried; I really tried. Everything was telling me—I was telling me—this is one I’m going to like. Instead, I got Pablum for the Young Rebel Soul. I suspect I approached this novel with the same myopic nostalgia that, occasionally, contributes to the delusion that young people who are just getting their driver’s licenses and I are ‘roughly’ the same age. More random thoughts to follow.

So you want to write a novel, huh? But, dammit, you just don’t know how to start? No problem, man; it’s cool, da ...more

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Apr 15, 2011 J-Sin rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Pardon me while I write a scathing review for this book in the style of Kerouac, the Rambler.

I really don't understand why this book is considered a classic. I think of it as nothing more than a diary written by a man who was soused all of the time and whose brain could not understand structure and the unwritten rules of writing. It's incoherent, rambles on for days, and the "style" is distracting and annoying enough that reading even a page makes me yearn to kick somebody's puppy. And I like pu ...more

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May 06, 2008 Lostinanovel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 remorse and guilt ...more

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Mar 18, 2018 Anuradha rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: any white man who suffers from first world problems.

Recommended to Anuradha by: that one person who compared this to The Catcher in the Rye.

Shelves: crazy-train, drama-drama-drama, heroes-who-make-me-throw-up, confused, el-clasico, seeeeeeeex, fucking-cheater, travel, loathing-unadulterated-loathing, it-s-my-life

EDIT: 26/03/2018
I just learnt that Sam and Dean from Supernatural were named after Sal and Dean, and I don't know what to believe in anymore.

--

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

ALTERNATE TITLE: White People Problems
ALTERNATE ALTERNATE TITLE: How Many Girls is Too Many Girls?
ALTERNATE ALTERNATE ALTERNATE TITLE: Do I Sound Smart Yet?

Why is this a beloved book? I read it for the second time because I thought I was too young to have understood it when I read it the first time. Well, turns out the book is sti ...more

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Jan 20, 2014 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A rolling stone gathers no moss…

Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.

Roads weave into a tapestry of life… Roads interlace into a labyrinth… There is no end to them… One can’t reach a finish… One can only stop… Or to be stopped.

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted…

There is a time to sow wild oats and a time to reap what was sown…

…there was nothing behind me any more, all my bridges were gone and I didn’

...more

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Sep 25, 2007 Paul Bryant rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

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 these very kind blue glo ...more

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Dec 09, 2016 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, favorites, pop-culture, classics

This book takes me back to that once in a lifetime summer when you sit with your friends and say "we should just hit the road and let it take us anywhere." Over the years you look back and wonder - can you say that you took the road... "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." But that difference is already faded; the road is covered over with the autumnal leafs of memory - and it is lost. Jack took that road; and I traveled with him in the spirit of that summer lo ...more

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Nov 11, 2009 Trevor rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

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 y 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 you wake up in the morning after your head has slid down the side of the toilet and you find yourself covered in proof that US sailors aren’t as accurate shots as they make themselves out to be. I don’t care if you turn up your jazz records so loud that it wakes every single bloody kid down the street so that they bawl out at the full stretch of their lungs from midnight right through to 6 am - just as long as all of those kids and everyone else living in that street who’s bleary eyed and up half the night shut the hell up as soon as I close the covers of the book.

Ah yes…

I’m not proud, I’ll admit it, I’m infinitely too straight to ever spend any real quality time with Mr Kerouac and his assorted friends. If I was there with them you’d have no trouble finding me. I’d be the guy in the back seat of their car with his eyes tight shut trying to pretend to be asleep, even if I would be listening, listening intently. Just the same, I already know that the bad driving would force my eyelids open just as surely as if matchsticks had been propped in there under the lashes. Yes, yes, I would find the driving the most difficult thing to deal with. I’ve never taken any sorts of objective measurements or done the comparisons that would need to be done, but I just don’t think my penis is small enough to make me need to risk death by car accident so as to prove my manhood. Shit no.

Still, this novel rings out and over and through a million imitations. It might well be a sad-but-true fact I’m telling you here, but my bet is that outright plagiarists have made ten gazillion times more than Kerouac ever did out of his beats. They’ve copied him in film and in book and in song. And I’m prepared to say here that there is no question that some of those imitations are nearly as good as Pepsi and some, well, some are more like home-brand Cola, but there have always been others that are not just the real thing, but they’ve even had a splash of whisky added – all pure and inspired. Those imitators taste like originals, either that or they have had their ears whispered into as if by the devil himself (so that it’s just like walking down the middle of a street where all lampposts have their streetlights smashed, but you’re okay and you’re going to be okay because right beside you is Tom Waits himself, and it’s Waits with a saxophone moaning low from an open window of a tenement building here-abouts – like he did that night on track nine from Nighthawks at the Diner).

This is a book affected by the rhythms of Jazz and it shows in virtually every sentence. He even mentions one of my all time favourite songs as he’s heading down the road somewhere on a particularly good night – Billie Holiday’s version of Lover Man sticks in his head (and can you really imagine a better song to have stuck there?) It is hard to read this book without a soundtrack of Dizzy Gillespie or Thelonious Monk or maybe even the Lady herself humming in your head, though maybe not singing, maybe just vamping one-handed on some just out-of-tune upright piano while the bass man taps his stings half-heartedly, half-heartedly and no more. Come here and find me a blindman for this piano. Still, there’s always music here, lots of music. And I don’t mean just in reference, but in the beat of the words as they hit the page. Christ, maybe even as residue sound from the keystrokes tapping against the paper scrunched up in an old manual typewriter.

Ah yes, ah yes…

Like I said, I’m just too straight for the madness of all this. The crazed brothel scene near the end with the young Latin American girls plastered and passed out and violated in expectation of little more than enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes – even if, perhaps, they received much more than that, you know, in the end, even if no one seemed to know how much was actually spent. It was clear from the beginning how much would be taken from all of these all-too-young little angels. Yes, that was all too much for my all too dull and far too prudish categorical imperatives. I struggled and I felt for those young girls and for what was being taken from them for a fist full of paper worth virtually nothing.

There was lots of that – lots of the sorts of things that good sons and good employees and good fathers struggle up against and fight up against and find just all too confronting. And I won’t hear any of your half-baked psychological bullshit about repressed desires. I’m not in the least trying to run away from what I want the most. I’m just warning you, that’s all; especially since while reading this book you’ll be brought up smack face-to-face close and right up far on the inside of this guy's head – and some of the places he has plans to take you, well, they aren’t on any Women’s Weekly package plane and bus tour itinerary. I mean that for sure. And your passport, well, that not going to do you any good either, not where he’s taking you. It is best you know right now that if someone asks you for your passport along this road then it’s just as likely that they’re planning to steal it from you. Like I said, I’m warning you, that’s all.

Listen to that. That trilling on the piano. That isn’t just there to show off the virtuosity of the guy with his fingers a blur over the keys; no, it’s not that. That’s there to remind you that round about midnight you’re going need to skip and step and jump onto a fright-train and to not forget that you’ve only got one shot and that’s when she slows up just a little bit on the bend. The trill is to remind you that every drink you have between now and then is going to cost you double as you run for that open door, the one with the hand sticking out of the dark and with someone you think you know calling out your name. But think nothing of it now, my friend, put it right out of your mind.

Although, if it was me I would recommend you remember – for there’s not a single person here who doesn’t love you, who isn’t your brother; just as there’s not a single person here who won’t leave you for dead out in the freezing cold of the night or abandon you in a strange city with your head stuck down a toilet bowl because the ice cream they recommended you eat this morning, the ice cream they said was a health food, really didn’t agree with the whisky they passed you this afternoon just as they nudged you in the ribs and pointed out that pretty little 15 year old Mexican girl sitting all alone and lonely and lost somewhere deep down in almond brown of her own eyes. The same brown eyes she used to furtively check you over with – what? Has that been for the third time now? Remember, there’s not one of them that won’t leave you to fend for yourself even as they drive off in their fifteen cent taxi with a quick glance back over their shoulder to see you walking stark naked and crying down the street because the Mexican dream girl you'd been talking to finally did get on her Greyhound Bus after she turned away from you spilling your guts into the gutter all almond coloured from the vanilla icecream and whisky you'd mixed together for their health giving properties. And damn it if you weren’t certain, as certain as you’ve ever been, that you had finally and for the first time in your life fallen in love and this time, this time it was for sure. For sure.

You’ll either love this book or hate it – cos that's the way this book is. Do you understand what I saying to you? You don’t have to love it just because it’s seminal – if you’re going to love it the fact it is seminal won’t add anything to the pleasure, just as if you are going to hate it the fact it spawned other works of art isn’t going to help in any way either.

Ah, I say, ah yes, that’s got to be me now, yes…
...more

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Jan 08, 2009 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-novels

I am a firm believer in a checklist for life. This wouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows me, for I am always attempting to enforce order onto chaos. This was my favorite part about college and lawschool; the fact that it broke life into fall semester, Christmas break, spring semester, and summer. It created a marvelous little cycle of struggle and reward.

Life is not necessarily chaotic. However, it is certainly undelineated, uncertain, sprawling, sudden, and unknowable. It is only bounded ...more

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Aug 26, 2012 David Schaafsma rated it really liked it

Shelves: postwar-fiction-class, fifties, beats, fiction-20th-century

I read this book when I was 20 and I loved it, it spoke like Truth to my Heart, and every summer I and one or some of my increasingly hairy friends got on the road West, to the Rockies, to the Grand Tetons, to backpack and climb and breathe in for a time the pure air of the West. Freedom, man! Back to Nature, one with Nature. At its best the writing was a celebration of all that is good in life, of love, of intoxications and lusts of various kinds. On the road! Romantic. Ecstatic. 5 stars.

At 30 I read this book when I was 20 and I loved it, it spoke like Truth to my Heart, and every summer I and one or some of my increasingly hairy friends got on the road West, to the Rockies, to the Grand Tetons, to backpack and climb and breathe in for a time the pure air of the West. Freedom, man! Back to Nature, one with Nature. At its best the writing was a celebration of all that is good in life, of love, of intoxications and lusts of various kinds. On the road! Romantic. Ecstatic. 5 stars.

At 30 I read it again to see if it was still vibrant and relevant and happy to be all alive. I was looking for a touchstone, spinning out of control, recently divorced, directionless, had bought (what I thought was, for no clear reason) a hot car, spent money I didn't have on a cool stereo system, started to live and drink and drive faster and faster. I had been teaching at that point eight years; My life was in a crisis of my own making. I was deeply disappointed in myself as what I read in the writing not only didn't reinforce my bad choices but reflected on my own excesses and mistakes and sadness; I found the writing turgid, narcissistic, badly edited, somewhat misogynist, drunken wastrel prose, though I saw better this time in it the deep sadness underlying the wild surface. I thought it was writing of a certain time in your life, but when you grow up you leave those childish things behind. I tried to get my life together and went to grad school. On the road, eh. I had found it in some ways juvenile and about selfish individualism this time, mine and his. 2 stars.

At 60 I am in my 38th year of teaching, now in my happy third marriage, with five kids I feel I am lucky to have and be able to support who all still love me. I am happy to be alive and healthy. I survived some very rocky years when much worse might have ensued. So when I took a road trip with my friend George to see my friend Corey in Boston and see Fenway Park, a bucket list item, we had a blast (notwithstanding a poem I wrote about it that makes fun of all the high expectations amidst all the rain). Loved the trip. We visited Kerouac's gravesite in Lowell and in the mist of the day hovered over George's IPhone to listen to Kerouac's own voice reading his words from "October in the Railroad Earth."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hjPZ...

The prose I find on my third reading is poetic, deeply committed to working class and democratic values, and a celebration of life. When I get home I start to reread all the Kerouac I still have in the house, including On the Road, which I find I love like an old friend I have had been "on the outs" with, as my Dad used to say. We are pals again, we love being on the road! Romantic, just what I need in this phase of my life, connecting passionate language to life. It's a little uneven, it's not always really great language or storytelling, it feels sometimes like a young man's diary, but I also like that for the immediacy of that, too, and it is important to me for the joy and sadness in it. 4 stars. Not because it is one of the greatest books of all time for all people. It's a "boy book" in what are sometimes painful ways to read, because the women always seem peripheral to the men. But 4 stars + because it is a very personal book right now for me, speaking to me in ways I need to listen to, especially the darker aspects of it, when it veers dangerously close to madness and regret.

Jack Kerouac reading from On the Road in the surreal circumstance of an appearance on The Steve Allen Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLpN... ...more

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Jul 31, 2007 Derek rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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-girlfr 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.
...more

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Apr 29, 2011 Jason Koivu rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

They're just good ol' boys never meaning no harm, making their way the only way they know how, but that's just a bit more than the law will allow...

The characters of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On the Road are 20th Century equivalents of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer: boys having joyous American adventures. Sal and Dean trip (in more ways than one) back and forth from the east coast to the west, and down south even as far as Mexico, always looking to get their kicks. It's a free- ...more

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Jul 23, 2015 Gabrielle rated it liked it

Shelves: american, movie-fodder, reviewed, classics, own-a-copy, to-read-again, penguin-modern-classics

Here’s the thing : there’s a time to read Kerouac, and it’s not your thirties. I first read “On the Road” when I was 19 and I loved how meandering and crazy it was… and in retrospect, I know it’s because I was similarly scattered and unhinged. When one’s in that headspace, it’s natural to appreciate that there’s a classic out there that captures the sort of spontaneous madness that most people only experience in the first half of their twenties. I re-read it when I was twenty-two, and I still th Here’s the thing : there’s a time to read Kerouac, and it’s not your thirties. I first read “On the Road” when I was 19 and I loved how meandering and crazy it was… and in retrospect, I know it’s because I was similarly scattered and unhinged. When one’s in that headspace, it’s natural to appreciate that there’s a classic out there that captures the sort of spontaneous madness that most people only experience in the first half of their twenties. I re-read it when I was twenty-two, and I still thought it was brilliant. Reading it at thirty-three made me cringe way more than I had imagined it would…

In historical context, what Kerouac did with this book was revolutionary and it’s important to remember that: the book is dynamic, it threw caution and literary standards to the wind and ran as far and as fast as it could from what Jack considered to be “establishment”. And on that basis, it's worth checking out.

Of course nothing that goes on in this book makes a lick of sense to me now. The lifestyle these characters have is beyond unsustainable and their carelessness with each other is actually quite distressing. And while obviously, the way male characters handle female characters infuriated me, the ladies in this book don’t have much in the way of redeeming qualities either: being “free” is all nice and good, but it should never ever mean treating other human beings like garbage. And there is a copious amount of that in “On the Road”, which made me really sad. It’s no secret that this is a roman à clef and that most of the events described in the novel are a version of something that actually happened, and these people creating so much suffering for themselves and those around them weighs the book down like an anchor. The idolization of Dean Moriarty – who is an epic douchewaffle – is definitely the part that was the hardest to digest this time around. Not to mention the glaring hypocrisy and pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness.

The hallucinatory descriptions of trips, both physical and psychological are still entrancing and often poetic, even when they are incoherent. As an ode to freewheeling youth, it has moments of inspiring and lyrical bravado. But I can’t escape the knowledge that all of Sal Paradise’s promises are empty, and that Kerouac never truly found what he was looking for.

I’ll be revisiting his other books eventually, to see if they hold up on their own, but do yourself a favor: if you read this book when you were young(er) and loved it, leave it alone. ...more

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Mar 25, 2018 Emer (A Little Haze) rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: My fellow masochists who have to read the classics simply *because*

Recommended to Emer (A Little Haze) by: my terrible masochistic reading habits after reading Anu's review

Shelves: the-hype-lies, 1star, reviewed, adult-fiction, read2018, challenge-atoz2018, modern-classics

Wow...

Can I request a lobotomy please? Something to chase this utter mess of a novel from my brain, rid my memory of this painful reading experience.

I mean I should have known better than to read this after reading Anu's fabulous review but well.... I'm one of those people that will read any book that is on any of those 100 books to read before you die type lists so I don't regret reading this because I can always say I have read Kerouac now.

BTW click here to read Anu's brilliant review which Wow...

Can I request a lobotomy please? Something to chase this utter mess of a novel from my brain, rid my memory of this painful reading experience.

I mean I should have known better than to read this after reading Anu's fabulous review but well.... I'm one of those people that will read any book that is on any of those 100 books to read before you die type lists so I don't regret reading this because I can always say I have read Kerouac now.

BTW click here to read Anu's brilliant review which inspired me to read this at last.

I'm trying very hard to look at this book in a dispassionate manner. Because it is oh so very easy to have a knee jerk (and pretty violent) reaction to the saints and sluts portrayal of women. To not respond negatively to the feckless behaviours of the characters, Dean especially. So if I set aside the casual racism, homophobia, utter misogyny and paedophilic tendencies that is rife within the pages of this book then what positive things can I say about it?

Well developed characters with interesting story arcs? Nope.
A plot that keeps ticking over nicely maintaining your interest? Also nope.

This is basically the wet dream of every white misogynistic, homophobic, racist male who dreams of being a rebel in only the way that someone with white privilege can. Normally for a book to work for me it has to have either one of two things; a strong storyline or detailed, well rounded characters. For me this had neither. I can excuse the lack of plot because the whole point of this was the transitory nature of these characters. How they had to keep moving, meandering their way through existence without ever actually doing anything. So then I look to characters. How did they feel to me? They were all caricature and no soul. The women especially. But if I ignore the misogynistic way that women were portrayed and the double standards to which they were held, and look at the male characters as pure, unadulterated jerks then how well-developed do those jerks feel to me.... And I gotta say that they are almost as painfully flat and one-dimensional. The leading male characters of Sal the narrator and his most frequent travelling companion Dean didn't work as anti-heroes either. The relationship between Sal and Dean was the main relationship of the book. And for me Sal's continued idolisation of Dean clouded the story too much. Basically Sal's head was shoved so far up Dean's arse that he couldn't see all the other people around him; it prevented Sal's narration from exploring the intricacies and personalities of the supporting characters. And Dean himself was just idolised so much that he was essentially Sal's manic dream pixie boy that existed on a plain separate to everyone else. And hilariously enough, for two such homophobic characters their relationship really was almost quasi romantic in its existence.

So at the end of the day I feel that there was nothing in this reading experience to reward my patience with the read. It was just a painfully messy word splurge.
Like it's taken pretty much as fact that Kerouac was writing about real people here. And just gave them all aliases. Kerouac himself is Sal, Neal Cassady is Dean etc etc. And I do wonder if this is a huge flaw of the book. Because in many respects Kerouac was blinded to writing something more truthful or at least well rounded because he was all about portraying this 'style' over substance. He wants so much to show us how rebellious these characters are that he forgot that they are still human beings and never fully fleshed them out.
Or he was just too freaking off his head and utterly wasted to write a coherent plot.

one star ...more

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Jan 25, 2018 Roman Clodia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

2nd read, July 2020

Re-reading this I was far more conscious of a growing sense of disillusion in Sal Paradise as he contemplates Dean Moriarty, the epitome of beat: part holy-man, part con-man, the other side of his free-living, restless life is his lack of reliability which Sal experiences first hand when he's sick and abandoned in Mexico.

Kerouac evokes the mythography of American pioneers and lonesome cowboys ('this road,' I told him, 'is also the route of old American outlaws') even as Sal, 2nd read, July 2020

Re-reading this I was far more conscious of a growing sense of disillusion in Sal Paradise as he contemplates Dean Moriarty, the epitome of beat: part holy-man, part con-man, the other side of his free-living, restless life is his lack of reliability which Sal experiences first hand when he's sick and abandoned in Mexico.

Kerouac evokes the mythography of American pioneers and lonesome cowboys ('this road,' I told him, 'is also the route of old American outlaws') even as Sal, and even Dean, seem to yearn for some kind of home that always evades them: 'so I went up and there she was, the girl with the pure and innocent dear eyes that I had always searched for'.

And Kerouac's prose is astounding.

-----------------------------------------------

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

A blazing, youthful book, packed with energy and sadness, rebellion and disaffection: don't read this if you're looking for a plot or some kind of linear storytelling, read it for the evocation of mood, and Kerouac's 'spontaneous writing' that fizzes with vigour and force.

Set in 1947 and based around 4 road trips across the US, Kerouac's alter ego, Sal Paradise, follows his idol Dean Moriarty in an odyssey of wildness: drink, drugs, hook-ups, jazz. The boy-men fall in love again and again, abandoning women across the country because this is a masculine bromance and there's no real place for girls.

Only during the 3rd and 4th trips, a darker element seeps in: Sal realises that Moriarty is a 'holy con-man' and that the other side of freedom is a rootlessness that cuts deep - one of the things that Dean Moriarty is searching for is his lost father, and he duplicates and multiplies that loss as he gets girls pregnant then leaves them, sprinkling fatherless children across the country.

There are moments when we want to reach into the book and shake some sense into Sal, particularly when he sentimentalises what it might mean to be black in 1940s America: 'I was only myself... wishing I could exchange worlds with the happy, true-hearted, ecstatic Negroes of America' - hmm. The casual misogyny and homophobia of the time also have a place here as, apparently, rejection of stifling social conventions only goes so far...

Nevertheless, there's something deeply hypnotic about Kerouac's prose and the final journey when Sal, at least, has started to understand the cost of the road is poignant and close to philosophical:

... the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.
...more

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Feb 01, 2008 Maclain Rigdon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 wi ...more

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About Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

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Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Jack Kerouac's writing career began in the 1940s, but didn't meet with commercial success until 1957, when On the Road was published. The book became an American classic that defined the Beat Generation. Kerouac died on October 21, 1969, from an abdominal hemorrhage, at age 47.

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Quotes from On the Road

“[...]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 and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” — 11090 likes

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” — 2659 likes

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