On the Road in Overdue Podcast

Aug 31, 2015 David rated it liked it · review of another edition

I went in expecting not to like this. My cursory knowledge of the beat generation icons led me to believe they were all pretentious assholes, which definitely seems to be true. What I forgot is that a pretentious asshole can still write a decent book, and that a book doesn't have to be about good or likable people to be engrossing.

Kerouac paints a vivid picture of an America so far removed from me in time that it might as well be a different country. The book is somewhat worth reading for that I went in expecting not to like this. My cursory knowledge of the beat generation icons led me to believe they were all pretentious assholes, which definitely seems to be true. What I forgot is that a pretentious asshole can still write a decent book, and that a book doesn't have to be about good or likable people to be engrossing.

Kerouac paints a vivid picture of an America so far removed from me in time that it might as well be a different country. The book is somewhat worth reading for that alone. Beyond that, though, is a remarkably compelling first-person narrator. There's just something about the voice of it that draws you in. A madness, if you will. A lust for life, an insane hedonism, a massively conflated sense of self-importance.

Speaking of madness, Kerouac, apparently, wrote this on a single sheet of paper (he taped them together so he wouldn't have to stop typing) over three weeks while being kept up by coffee, cigarettes, and drugs. He cut and added things here and there after that, but essentially we're reading the result of a three-week outpouring of work based on the extensive notes he took during the journey. It shows. The writing is still rough. Sentences go on for too long and obviously should have been cut into two distinct sentences. Existential tangents blindside you constantly. A lack of focus permeates the whole thing. On the whole I don't mean any of it in a bad way, necessarily. It is, I think, an intrinsic part of the appeal. If this same book had been written in a more "put together" way, I would count it as an overall loss. It's raw, ephemeral, like it came from some otherworldly force instead of human hands. It definitely fits his character, at the very least.

Still, there are major problems. Mostly in pacing and any sort of consistent quality. The beginning and end of the book contains solid four star material, and there are similar gems lurking in the middle as well--but there are also some long bits that are two stars at best. I feel like 3/5 is a fair average of my experience, but it was by no means consistently that good the entire way through. Just keep that in mind. You will hit parts that drag and they drag hard. ...more

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