On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) | Jack Kerouac

On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) | Jack Kerouac | Two American Wanderers

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On the Road (Pengu...

	On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) Jack Kerouac Penguin (Non-Classics), 1999 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 630 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Masterpiece as Dusty Museum Piece

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT:

This 1957 autobiographical novel tells of two 20-something protagonists who criss-cross the continental United States during a string of comical, sex-filled, alcohol-slicked automobile road trips. The novel is told in the first person by the protagonist named "Sal Paradise" (a character who greatly resembles the book's real-life author, Jack Kerouac). "Sal Paradise" travels most of the time in the company of his beloved buddy "Dean Moriarty" (a character who is based very closed on Kerouac's real-life travel buddy Neal Cassady).

"On the Road" showcases a small group of young men and women (all characters based on real-life acquaintances of Kerouac) who lived and were bored in the America of the late 1940's and early 1950's. They find their parents' generation intolerably strait-laced, square, and boring. To shake off their shackles and find their own way, these young people hit the road. America's highways are their escape route; booze is their fuel and marijuana their elixir. Sex and live jazz complete the tableau.

WHY THIS BOOK IS HARD TO START/PENETRATE:

REASON #1. Kerouac as author isn't tidy. The whole book is sort of single idea (e.g.: society is stale and corrupt, so go on a road trip to numb your pain and possibly find enlightenment), and its 300+ pages do not, in my opinion, push the protagonist into a state of relief or enlightenment. (Indeed--maybe this circularity and lack of development of Sal Paradise's character was Kerouac's way of saying--like Samuel Beckett in "En Attendant Godot"--that, essentially, life stinks and then you die.

REASON #2. The book's structure is sloppy and far from being "Type A Personality" tidy. In other words, while "On the Road" is divided into "Parts" of uneven length and in turn these "Parts" are divided into numbered (but titleless) chapters, this putative organization doesn't really help the reader along in his/her journey through the text.

REASON #3. Kerouac starts the book "in medias res." There is no explanation at the beginning of the text who precisely the characters are and why they should be important to the reader.

REASON #4. Kerouac never really announces anywhere in "On the Road": (1.) what the book is about; (2.) what it's trying to do; or (3.) how it's supposed to affect its readers. (And that's not necessarily a bad thing; it's a stylistic choice made by Kerouac). But woe is the reader who tries to slip into "On the Road" without being willing to do some hard, grinding, groping reading during the first few dozen pages. It's a rough kick-off.

HOW TO DESCRIBE JACK KEROUAC'S WRITING STYLE:

Kerouac's style is intriguing, and has been copied enormously since the publication of "On the Road" back in 1957. (For this reason, it is hard--fifty years later--to see how much of an innovator he was.) In his first-person narration, Kerouac is noun- and verb-heavy (that is, he goes sparingly on adjectives and adverbs), and composes in very long sentences and beefy, half- or three-quarter-page-long paragraphs.

His vocabulary is banal, ordinary, everyday, and unexceptional. (I doubt this is an accident.) Although he describes a good bit of sex, violence, and argumentation, swear words are nearly invisible, and then only ones found in the text could be uttered today on television without a fine from the FCC. Although Kerouac has an excellent ear for dialogue, there is very little direct (i.e., quoted) dialogue in the book. Most of it is paraphrasing or else Sal Paradise's capsule descriptions of discussions that had taken place earlier in time in the novel.

Kerouac's narrator Sal Paradise slips, on occasion, into moments of lyricism. Cleverly, these moments of verbal purity sneak up on the reader. They usually involve the protagonist's delight with nature, or with freedom. Upon re-reading, however, these moments of lyricism seem ever so slightly purple and adolescent. (Again--perhaps Kerouac styled them this way on purpose).

Kerouac does two things brilliantly. First, he creates dozens of hilarious or even laugh-out-loud-funny scenes, but the narrator never turns into a hyena over them. Sal Paradise plays it quiet and wry. Second, Kerouac's descriptions of jazz music being played live in seedy clubs is fascinating. Breaking down each musical instrument into a descriptive sentence (often a run-on or otherwise swollen), he threads these instruments/sentences into a single paragraph that, in turn, plays within the reader's mind as if he or she were actually sitting in the club listening to the music.

WHY THIS BOOK WAS RADICAL IN 1957:

America's youth in 1957 was--if we simplify--a repressed, WASPy, serious, no-nonsense, Pat Boone and Mickey Mouse Club brigade of crew-cutted and pig-tailed squares. And then (like the snarling Elvis Presley just a year earlier) came "On the Road": a book about slightly older kids (in their early 20's) who were sassy, rebellious, two-fisted, booze-slurping, Cadillac-trashing, sexed-up good-for-nothings. What real-life teen can resist a fictitious, super-cool rebel like Neal Cassady? Keep in mind that none of the main characters in "On the Road" ends up getting punished or "put in his place." Certainly the fact that the naughty young people in "On the Road" actually "get away" with their naughtiness must have been a shocker back in 1957.

WHY THIS BOOK IS A CULTURAL TOTEM:

For the past fifty years (and most particularly from 1957 to the late 1970's), "On the Road" has been a sort of Bible and talisman for American high school kids who are fed up with adults and itching with Wanderlust. Let's call Jack Kerouac the James Dean of the high-school intelligentsia set. We've now had several generations of angry teens who found in "On the Road" a digestable chunk of serious, no-longer-for-children "grown-up" literature that, paradoxically, perfectly spells out what it means to be a ticked-off, mad-as-hell, bored young person.

WHY THIS BOOK IS ANTIQUATED (i.e., "DUSTY"):

Kerouac, during his lifetime, said that "On the Road" was about internal quests for truth. But the thrilling part of the book, at least for me, is the nutty, fast-paced, and often dangerous criss-crossing of the country in speeding and recklessly-driven borrowed or stolen automobiles. But the United States of the late 1940's and early 1950's is no longer as big, broad, mysterious, and fascinating in 2007.

Think of all the things that have shrunken the physical size and ethereal mysteriousness of the U.S.A.: cheap and frequent **air** travel; an incredibly dense and efficient network of national highways; broadcast television and then cable television; inexpensive long-distance telephone rates, and then cell phones; and a uniquely American habit of children moving far, far away from the city or town in which they were born and raised.

In other words, the whole mystery of hurtling through the highways of America at night is no longer as exciting as it must have been a half-century ago. In fact, taking a long car trip like Sal and Dean sounds in 2007 kind of like a pain in the neck.

So, just like a Ford Model T, "On the Road" was brilliant in its time, but must now be confined to a very honored place behind a museum's glass partition, with full recognition of the greatness it had in its own time and for a few decades thereafter. We just don't do it like that anymore.

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Two American Wanderers

In the fifty years since its publication in 1957, Kerouac's "On the Road" has become an American classic. The book will bear a variety of interpretations: different readers have found and will continue to find many ways or reading and understanding "On the Road." Some readers see the mad journeys of the characters in the book as a seeking, religious in character. Other readers, see the protagonists as out for "kicks", "gurls", and wild times. Some see Dean Moriarty as the hero of the book -- as the protagonist of a new way of life which became known as 'beat'. (The term "beatnik" is not used in "On the Road".) But it is also possible to read "On the Road" as a rejection of Dean Moriarty and the life he represents. I have read this book several times, and with each reading have got something new from it. It is a passionately written work with a tone of poetry, bop, and movement. Oddly, the book didn't impress me when I first read it as an adolescent many years ago, but it has become one of my favorite novels.

"On the Road" is an autobiographical novel. The two major characters are Dean Moriarty who is based on a figure named Neal Cassady (1926 -- 1968) and Sal Paradise, the first-person narrator who is based on Kerouac (1922 -- 1969) himself. (Some early readers believed that Moriarty was the Kerouac figure, resulting in a serious misunderstanding of the book.) The action of the story takes place between 1947 and 1950. When the novel opens the reader hears Paradise's/Kerouac's inimitable voice: "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead." Moriarty was born in Salt Lake City and had spent much of his youth in pool halls, reform school, and in prison, from which he had escaped. He came to New York City with his 16 year old wife, Marylou and met Kerouac and his friends. In following Moriarty with his energy, restlessness, endless movement, and sexual libido, Paradise thinks he might find his way out of his sadness and purposelessness.

The book tells of the friendship between Paradise and Moriarty and of their many reckless journeys back and forth through the United States. Paradise first travels alone, by bus and by hitchiking, to catch up with Moriarty in Denver and in San Francisco. Throughout their trips, Moriarty looks for his elderly father who, as did his son, lived a life of vagrancy and criminality, and was thought to be wandering as a hobo or in jail. The two, in the company of others, travel back to the East coast, to New Orleans, to meet "Old Bull Lee" (William Burroughs -- the author of "The Naked Lunch"), to San Francisco and Denver again, through Chicago and Detroit, back to New York City, to the West coast, and to Mexico City, where Moriarty, for the second time in the book abandons Paradise who has become ill with disentery. In the final scenes of the book, the two wanderers have a reunion of sorts in New York City before Moriarty heads back to San Francisco to resume living with his second wife whom he has just divorced.

The book proceeds at a frenetic pace as Moriarty drives recklessly from coast to coast, usually in cars he has borrowed. The book shows the breadth of America as well as the questing of rootless, troubled individuals with no particular place to go. "Whee, Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there," says Moriarty at one point. "Where we going man?" Sal asks. Moriarty responds, "I don't know but we gotta go."

Besides the broad, travel scenes, "On the Road", includes detailed descriptive passages of many individuated scenes -- jazz clubs in San Franciso and New York, seedy all-night theatres, small hotels and road side stands, cold water flats in New York, a brothel in Mexico, and much else. There are strong characterizations of several characters in addition to Moriarty and Paradise, including Moriarty's three wives, Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Ed Dunkel and his wife Galatea -- who delivers a stunning rebuke late in the novel to Moriarty and his way of life. One of the finest extended passages in the book is the story in Part 1 of Paradise's brief affair with a young Mexican girl named Terry, which begins as the two are passengers on a bus to Los Angeles.

But the focus of this book is on Paradise and Moriarty and on how Moriarty changes Sal Paradise's life. Paradise is a writer who has just published his first novel. (Kerouac's first book, "The Town and the City".) Paradise is torn between the fast-paced, romantic, woman-filled life he sees in Moriarty and his own feelings for a more conventional, settled life with a purpose -- as represented in "On the Road" by the character of his aunt. Paradise admires Moriarty deeply for his energy and attempts to maximize experience and optimism, while he is also troubled by Moriarty's violence, criminality and irresponsibility and by his treatment of his three wives. Galatea Dunkel's lengthy tirade against Moriarty, which I mentioned above, seems to me one of the key passages of "On the Road."

After Moriarty abandons Sal in Mexico, Sal eventually makes his way back to New York City where he meets the woman who will become his second wife and makes what will prove to be an unsuccessful attempt at a domestic, settled life. Moriarty is sent packing alone into a cold night back to San Francisco. The book ends with an ambiguity in the relationship between Paradise and Moriarty which mirrors the ambiguity of the entire story and which is at the heart of the divergent interpretations of "On the Road." Many current readers are inclined, contrary to the way many of the book's earliest readers understood "On the Road" to see Kerouac as rejecting, in large part, the life of protagonists of "On the Road", rather than celebrating it. Much can be said for this reading. But Moriarty has a tight hold on Paradise, who gives him up, if he does so, only with difficulty. As the book concludes, Paradise writes: "... 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."

Robin Friedman

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On the Road - To Nowhere

Jack Kerouac definitely had writing skill, and a lot of that skill shows up in "On the Road." However, I am one of the readers who finds the book lacks meaning, purpose and direction.

Some have claimed that "On the Road" was to the Beat Generation of the 1950's what "The Sun Also Rises" was to the Lost Generation of the 1920's. If that be so, then the Beat Generation didn't have much to say. "On the Road" is most certainly not in the same league as Hemingway's novel.

"On the Road" has passages of writing that are delightful, colorful and fresh. But the book, like its protagonists Sal and Dean, has no point or purpose. It is more like a travel diary, filled with disjointed events and people, making sudden turns and twists at the whim of its author.

Sal, a Navy vet from World War II spends all his time hitchiking and otherwise traveling back and forth across the continent, from New York to San Francisco and back, several times. The action takes place from 1947 to 1949. The descriptions of the people and towns along the road are interesting and colorful, but the only theme is narcissism - a selfish preoccupation with one's own sudden whims, passing desires and appetites. Narcissism is a personality disorder that Dean has, and Sal, to a lesser exent. Narcisstic individuals have been described as those who are self-absorbed and who have a pronounced lack of interest in and empathy for others.

So as Sal and Dean and other friends travel back and forth across the country, they steal food, gasoline and cigarettes, get drunk a lot, try to pick up girls, and take advantage of many people who befriend them or give them food, shelter or love. A good novel might well make use of narcissism in its characters to work towards an epiphany or make a moral point, but don't expect that of "On the Road." Kerouac is celebrating narcissism, not condemning it.

Sal, the major character of the novel, hero-worships his friend Dean Moriarty, who is described as a "mystic." Dean, however, is about as mystical as a doorknob. He has zero concern for the feelings, comforts or property of others, an utterly shallow and selfish man. Sal and Dean are hired to drive a 1947 Cadillac from Nebraska to Chicago, with two seminary students as passengers, who contribute money for gas. Dean drives at speeds up to 110 miles per hour, takes reckless risks on the road, slowly destroying the Cadillac. The car is a dented, filthy wreck when it is finally delivered to its owner in Chicago.

If Kerouac had a message to impart in "On the Road," it was apparently this: have fun, use people, avoid work at all costs, get drunk and live a life utterly devoid of purpose or meaning. I am not impressed.

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