On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.
The idea for On the Road, Kerouac's second novel, was formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was published by Viking Press in 1957.
The New York Times hailed the book's appearance …
On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.
The idea for On the Road, Kerouac's second novel, was formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was published by Viking Press in 1957.
The New York Times hailed the book's appearance as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is." In 1998, the Modern Library ranked On the Road 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
That was it. I closed the book, talked to a friend about it, threw a few things into a backpack, and we bought a ticket for the first train leaving the station. It was around ’91 or ’92, and it’s an experience I’ll never forget.
It was a book that marked entire generations, but nowadays, when everything is so certain and just a click away, that spirit seems to be gone.
Until one day.
Freedom and Fado.
I promise myself that I'll give at least 100 pages on any book I've read. And because I've heard so much about this one, I went a bit farther. But yikes, I had to quit--just couldn't get into it anymore.
There are some things I can appreciate with this book, and others I just can't grasp. I can appreciate the unique writing style, in the pacing of the story. There's something happening--or even very much NOT happening--on each page. What I can't grasp is the inconsistencies between thoughts and dialogue, how Sal, the narrator will be giving Dean's (or anyone's perspective) and it abruptly goes into the character talking. I can't word it better, and I barely got the gist of the dialogue.
All in all, I guess I tried to understand the characters, but they were just too much and not enough at the same time, as if they're …
I promise myself that I'll give at least 100 pages on any book I've read. And because I've heard so much about this one, I went a bit farther. But yikes, I had to quit--just couldn't get into it anymore.
There are some things I can appreciate with this book, and others I just can't grasp. I can appreciate the unique writing style, in the pacing of the story. There's something happening--or even very much NOT happening--on each page. What I can't grasp is the inconsistencies between thoughts and dialogue, how Sal, the narrator will be giving Dean's (or anyone's perspective) and it abruptly goes into the character talking. I can't word it better, and I barely got the gist of the dialogue.
All in all, I guess I tried to understand the characters, but they were just too much and not enough at the same time, as if they're confusing the hell out of themselves just by breathing, and we're experiencing that, too. If that was the goal, I guess the mission's accomplished. But I couldn't stick with it because it felt like "go on a trip on a whim, have crap happen, get in the dumps, go home, wash-rinse-repeat." I'd always read that this book was so iconic, but I guess I can't see it.
Who knows? Might be your cup of tea, too confusing to be mine (and I don't like feeling like I need drugs to understand what's going on, as some have suggested).
