On the Road by Jack Kerouac Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of On the Road
Book Review: A Must On Any Reading List
Summary: 5 Stars
Sal Paradise is on a quest, one that takes him back and forth across the American landscape and eventually into Mexico with Dean Moriarity- a character based on Kerouac's real friend Neal Cassady. Dean is a reform school graduate who specializes in stealing cars. In Sal's eyes, Dean's madness is glory. For Sal, "only the mad ones" matter. The ones that are living life on the edge.
One of the most unique aspects of this book is that form is integrative to the subject and period of time. His writing isn't gimmicky-an attempt to wow a reader with fireworks from the latest writing school programme. Kerouac's form is necessary to tell the story the way it happened. Pages and pages of flawless language spreading out before you. You feel like you are on the road-the wind blowing through your hair. Kerouac captures the jazz age, the way people of his time spoke-true genius writing at it's best.
Kerouac wrote On The Road in 23 days on two 60 foot scrolls of paper. He typed 100 wpm and didn't want to have to stop to change paper. But it is evident that he spent years in the seat of a car, composing this work in his head.
A wonderful book and one of my favourites.
(Update 2008- If you are ever in or around Denver, Colorado-I'd stop by a little town called Prospect. It's between Longmont and Boulder. Longmont was one of Kerouac's stops in On The Road. Kerouac dined and napped at an old art deco gas station named Johnson's Corner when he was travelling up and down Route 66. The gas station has been moved to Prospect and is in the process of being restored. You can visit, sit under the canopy he sat under, look up at Long's Peak as he did, and enjoy a soda. Johnson's Corner was also the first place in Colorado to serve black americans. The building is an interesting bit of literary history and a unique way to experience the book. The Kerouac House (as it has come to be called) is also one of the few art deco buildings I know of in Colorado. It has flamingo pink and blue stripes and looks like it belongs on South Beach! Prospect is located on HWY 287 and Pike Road. The gas station is on the far southern end of town, next to a three story brick building containing a store called Suburban Hill.)
Book Review: A Necessary Trip
Summary: 5 Stars
Some people would accuse me of being "conservative". I am not a "beatnik" but, I am also not "uptight". That said, I figured that "On the Road" would be an annoying glorification of personal irresponsibility and a tribute to the bohemian lifestyle. Geez, was I wrong! This book is absolutely one of the best novels of all time, period!Jack Kerouac was truly ahead of his time. He wrote this semi-autobiographical novel in the late 1940s but, it wasn't accepted for publication until 1957. The main character is Sal Paradise, a rootless, late 20s veteran of World War II who seeks adventure and enlightenment with his hipster and beat generation friends while wandering the country, often on his college money from his GI Bill. The "education" he gets is profoundly enlightening to the reader as each adventure seems to end up in shambles followed by an irresistible urge to escape the consequences by hitting the road and eventually repeating the tragic cycle anew. Most of the character's restless peregrinations originate in "the sins of their fathers". They each grew up surrounded by authority figures who set poor examples in their own lives but, had children anyway. "On the Road" is the story of this next generation repeating these mistakes while reveling in sex, drugs, and bop music. To quote Harry Chapin, "My boy had grown up just like me". The thing that makes this book so extraordinary is how Kerouac effortlessly endears many of the characters to us. We know these people, we understand these feelings, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, "We feel their pain". The tragedy of this beaten generation is like medieval alchemy studies; it took a long, long time and much treasure before earnest man finally realized that you just can't turn iron into gold. There was no one to tell them otherwise so, both of these era's "intellectuals" careened along blissfully ignorant on their respective roads to nowhere. You can't help but feel for them, though. And the writing is top-notch.
READ THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY. Forget your politics and preconceptions. This is a true slice of life and a lesson that I don't believe our generation has learned yet either. We can all learn something from Sal and Dean's travels. Very, VERY highly recommended.
Book Review: A Rambling Bore
Summary: 1 Stars
This book went on & on & on. OK, so Sal went on the road, then Sal, Dean and others went on the road. There was a lot of drinking and hitchhiking, and a lot of ridiculous ramblings by Dean. Go talk to some idiot on drugs and you'll hear the same thing. I had hoped for so much more but was greatly disappointed by this book - I could pace the floor of a 7-Eleven and get more enjoyment than I got out of this flimsy road-story. There were times when Kerouac's words sounded quite literary and lovely but the times were too few.Book Review: A Streaming, Sensuous Work of Chaotic Experience
Summary: 5 Stars
No work of American literature has ever captured the spirit of youthful wanderlust, of the freedom of wide-open American spaces, of the country's romance with its transient possibilities, better than "On the Road". It is a streaming, sensuous work of chaotic experience, forever carving the "Beat" spirit into the soul of American literature. It is a book which must be judged not simply by looking at whether it conforms to traditional notions of technical literary technique (because it does not), but, rather, upon Kerouac's own terms, which are much different. In Kerouac's words, in a 1968 Paris Review interview: "I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.""On the Road" has little in the way of plot or careful character development, the story being largely a chaotic narrative of the New York to San Francisco and back again adventures of Dean Moriarty (modeled almost wholly on the real life Beat figure Neal Cassady) and Sal Paradise (the erstwhile Kerouac himself), together with Beat buddies like Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg) and Bull Lee (William Burroughs). But its breathless, rambling narration of transient experience is a kind of literary "free fall" through the world of unfettered possibility that the open road offered in post-World War II America. It is a book heavily influenced by Jazz culture, as well as the culture of America's cities, the open highways which connect them, and America's love affair with the car.
Kerouac got the idea for "On the Road" from Neal Cassady himself, the model for Dean Moriarty. In Kerouac's words, "[I saw] how good old Neal Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional, completely serious, all detailed." Being a very rapid typist, Kerouac took this idea, taped together twelve-foot long sheets of paper, fed them into the typewriter and, fortified by pea soup, coffee and benzedrine, began writing. It was a novel technique-a technique which prompted Truman Capote to say that "On the Road" wasn't really "writing", it was just "typing"-but it resulted in one of the classic works of modern American literature.
In Ken Kesey's words, "Kerouac was part of the ongoing exploration of the American frontier, looking for new land, trying to escape the dust bowls of existence. He had a deep connection to the American romantic vision." It is this romantic vision, this connection with that long strand of American literature and culture that began with the frontier and its endless possibilities, that makes "On the Road" a book still worth reading today, a book that vividly captures something of what it's like to live and dream in America.
Book Review: A Streaming, Sensuous Work of Chaotic Experience
Summary: 5 Stars
No work of American literature has ever captured the spirit of youthful wanderlust, of the freedom of wide-open American spaces, of the country's romance with its transient possibilities, better than "On the Road". It is a streaming, sensuous work of chaotic experience, forever carving the "Beat" spirit into the soul of American literature. It is a book which must be judged not simply by looking at whether it conforms to traditional notions of technical literary technique (because it does not), but, rather, upon Kerouac's own terms, which are much different. In Kerouac's words, in a 1968 Paris Review interview: "I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.""On the Road" has little in the way of plot or careful character development, the story being largely a chaotic narrative of the New York to San Francisco and back again adventures of Dean Moriarty (modeled almost wholly on the real life Beat figure Neal Cassady) and Sal Paradise (the erstwhile Kerouac himself), together with Beat buddies like Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg) and Bull Lee (William Burroughs). But its breathless, rambling narration of transient experience is a kind of literary "free fall" through the world of unfettered possibility that the open road offered in post-World War II America. It is a book heavily influenced by Jazz culture, as well as the culture of America's cities, the open highways which connect them, and America's love affair with the car.
Kerouac got the idea for "On the Road" from Neal Cassady himself, the model for Dean Moriarty. In Kerouac's words, "[I saw] how good old Neal Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional, completely serious, all detailed." Being a very rapid typist, Kerouac took this idea, taped together twelve-foot long sheets of paper, fed them into the typewriter and, fortified by pea soup, coffee and benzedrine, began writing. It was a novel technique-a technique which prompted Truman Capote to say that "On the Road" wasn't really "writing", it was just "typing"-but it resulted in one of the classic works of modern American literature.
In Ken Kesey's words, "Kerouac was part of the ongoing exploration of the American frontier, looking for new land, trying to escape the dust bowls of existence. He had a deep connection to the American romantic vision." It is this romantic vision, this connection with that long strand of American literature and culture that began with the frontier and its endless possibilities, that makes "On the Road" a book still worth reading today, a book that vividly captures something of what it's like to live and dream in America.