“On the Road” written by Jack Kerouac is considered one of the top 100 books in American Literature from 1923-2005. On the Road essentially defined the post-war Beat Generation, which is really something I didn’t know much about.
The book itself was written in 1951 over a three-week, sweat-ridden type-fest. Kerouac wrote non-stop and in fact taped enough pieces of paper together to form a 120-foot “continuous roll” so he didn’t have to pause at the end of a page. That was so his thoughts wouldn’t be interrupted and cause him to halt the flow of story.
I started this book awhile ago while I was in Sausalito, and it might be the kind of story that requires total devotion – limit the time between reads. It’s almost as if you need to read it like it was written. Since I ended up finishing it by a chapter a night for three weeks, it started losing it’s “touch” I guess.
It’s written so crazily. So descriptive, so much imagery, so different than anything else I’ve read. The story is of Jack’s “beat” lifestyle and his friends, all of whom were real, but are named differently. It focuses mainly on his best friend “Dean Moriarty”, who some say he turned into a “hero of West” in his own eyes.
The fact is, the lifestyle they led was completely mind-blowing. Hitchhiking across the country, marrying girls, leaving them, doing drugs, stealing cars, loving jazz and music and wanting to “see” everything.
A typical Dean line would be something like, “Okay now, dig this river, where it starts, where it ends, now let’s blow!” The dialog in it seems hard to believe actually took place.
I truly see how this book must have exploded on the scene back in 1957. It spoke so much of the sub-culture of America that no one knew about. It’s almost a lifestyle that you wish you could drop yourself into for a week, or a month. To experience America like they did. To drive into a new city, park and just walk around and soak it all in without a care in the world where your next dollar was coming from.
I’m interested to see if anyone else read it and what their thoughts were.
I read it in college. I didn’t particularly care for it, but could appreciate how his writing style and prose was so different than anything else being written at the time and how that, in turn, really influenced writers to come. It definitely is a snapshot of a certain time and a certain movement in history. It was worth reading for those reasons alone (even if it wasn’t my cup of tea).
Yeah, wasn’t totally my cup of tea…I started to grow tired of the story since it was just more and more of the same.
I’m on to Blood Meridian though…that should be good
[...] Read “On The Road” [...]
[...] I picked this book up to read considering I had just finished On The Road by Jack Kerouac I wrote a review about it back in October and it was an amazing tale of the beat culture during the early 20’s. In that story, Kerouac [...]
[...] One of the passports had the name Dean Moriarty from Zurich on it. It took me awhile but that’s the infamous character from Jack Kerouac’s American Classic, On the Road. [...]
I loved the book when I read it, many years ago, probably in my early twenties. I carried on to read a few more of his; the best of which was Big Sur. I'd consider re-reading it… but my patience and tolerance levels have diminished over the years, it might be too much of a chore second time around, so maybe not.
John,
Interesting that you commented on this today, I just loaned the book out to
a friend who I think will like it.
I`m going to read it in a few days time. I guess I wold love to devote my M.A. thesis to Kerouac and the Beat Generation .