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3.28 AVERAGE
3.28 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
(Contains spoilers near the middle, marked) Prose is literally bursting with energy, I don't think I've ever quite read any style like this before other than an essay I read by Sartre. Not just with energy but manic love for life and everything. I thought the Beat generation were heady hipsters in NYC, but this presents a new view, of 'somber hipsters', disillusioned with the scene, who seek enlightenment that is embodied and earthy and primal, rather than just purely intellectual. For these reasons much of roughly the first quarter of the book was great. But even in that first quarter I can see clearly how problematic Kerouac's view and treatment of women is. Of course the predatory elements of preying on younger girls (which I get the unfortunate vibe that this was not uncommon in literature and society at this time) but also just the sheer objectification (and idolization) of women and the erasure of their own desires and hopes, just means of pleasure (and pretty much emotional salvation) for the 'true heroes' of the book. This is not to say that all the characterizations of women are misogynistic in the book, nor are all of the male characters always misogynistic, but the overruling philosophy and therefore behaviors are. I was actually glad the descriptions were not as lecherous as other books I've read but must the bar be so low?
I really wanted to embrace this book. Instead I'm at a tension with something I cannot just overlook. I cannot deny, however, there is really strong writing here, worldbuilding at its best, the way words are used and the way things are described beyond a cynical realism; it's definitely dense and rich. And his descriptions of people are just as generous as his descriptions of the land– even the love for women in this book could almost (not quite) be seen as an extension of the great love for everything presented in this book if it weren't so clearly misogynistic.
*************Spoilers from here*****************
\o.o\ \o.o\
Another falling of this book is while it is filled with some crazy spectacular moments, it's a bit long and a lot of the plot is actually boring, aimless wandering and rambling. And the height is a whorehouse (??!??) or they finally get down to Mexico City and Sal gets dysentery and Dean ditches him? They just return back to where they began. Such superficial relationships. It is ultimately really sad. The story of people chasing their restlessness to the ends only to end up where they began. Except somehow the protagonist is fine because he finds a wife, finally! Dang. Kerouac seems to preach a view of life that is bustling with life, but in the end ends up just as empty as the sneering cynics of NYC. I guess it could be an allegory for the pitfalls of romantic hedonism tbh. And the sorrows of a disillusioned white man (I don't mean this in a sardonic way, see quote below) in 1950s America.
A side effect of reading this book is using the word 'gone' to describe things. 'Isn't that the gonest diner?'
Criticism of NY scene (this is not to say he does not like NY. He has a complicated relationship w/ it but while he 'digs' the mid-west & all the rest of the country, he does mention how it feels so big and vast and lonely compared to NYC):
'Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn't care one way or the other...' (10) omitting the rest of that sentence...
Loneliness:
'Beyond some trees, across the sand, a great neon sign of a roadhouse glowed red. Hingham always went there for a beer when he was tired of writing. He was very lonely, he wanted to get back to New York. It was sad to see his tall figure receding in the dark as we drove away, just like the other figures in New York and New Orleans: they stand uncertainly underneath immense skies, and everything about them is drowned. Where go? what do? what for? ––sleep. But this foolish gang was bending forward.' (167)
'I struggled and hurried to New York, and one night I was standing in a dark street in Manhattan and called up to the window of a loft where I thought my friends were having a party. But a pretty girl stuck her head out the window and said, "Yes? Who is it?" "Sal Paradise," I said, and heard my name resound in the sad and empty street.' (306)
'At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night...All my life I'd had white ambitions; that was why I'd abandoned a good woman like Terry in the San Joaquin Valley...' (180). Some good honest insights here (like what are white ambitions and what has modernity pushed out at the expense of certain visions of success?)... at the same time it's very difficult to find sympathy for Sal here..................
Similar disillusionment with modernity: 'They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it. They didn't know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as they someday, and stretching out our hands in the same, same way. Our broken Ford, old thirties upgoing America Ford, rattled through them and vanished in dust.' (299).
Example of great description:
''In no time at all we were back on the main highway and that night I saw the entire state of Nebraska unroll before my eyes. A hundred and ten miles an hour straight through, an arrow road, sleeping towns, no traffic, and the Union Pacific streamliner falling behind us in the moonlight. I wasn't frightened at all that night; it was perfectly legitimate to go 110 and talk and have all the Nebraska towns– Ogallala, Gothenburg, Kearney, Grand Island, Columbus– unreel with dreamlike rapidity as we roared ahead and talked. It was a magnificent car; it could hold the road like a boat holds on water. Gradual curves were its singing ease.' (229)
Sal's despair peculiarly in speaking with girls who seem to have lost a joy for life; he has these conversations twice, this is the second time: 'I took up a conversation with a gorgeous country girl...She was dull. She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do.' (242)
I really wanted to embrace this book. Instead I'm at a tension with something I cannot just overlook. I cannot deny, however, there is really strong writing here, worldbuilding at its best, the way words are used and the way things are described beyond a cynical realism; it's definitely dense and rich. And his descriptions of people are just as generous as his descriptions of the land– even the love for women in this book could almost (not quite) be seen as an extension of the great love for everything presented in this book if it weren't so clearly misogynistic.
*************Spoilers from here*****************
\o.o\ \o.o\
Another falling of this book is while it is filled with some crazy spectacular moments, it's a bit long and a lot of the plot is actually boring, aimless wandering and rambling. And the height is a whorehouse (??!??) or they finally get down to Mexico City and Sal gets dysentery and Dean ditches him? They just return back to where they began. Such superficial relationships. It is ultimately really sad. The story of people chasing their restlessness to the ends only to end up where they began. Except somehow the protagonist is fine because he finds a wife, finally! Dang. Kerouac seems to preach a view of life that is bustling with life, but in the end ends up just as empty as the sneering cynics of NYC. I guess it could be an allegory for the pitfalls of romantic hedonism tbh. And the sorrows of a disillusioned white man (I don't mean this in a sardonic way, see quote below) in 1950s America.
A side effect of reading this book is using the word 'gone' to describe things. 'Isn't that the gonest diner?'
Criticism of NY scene (this is not to say he does not like NY. He has a complicated relationship w/ it but while he 'digs' the mid-west & all the rest of the country, he does mention how it feels so big and vast and lonely compared to NYC):
'Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn't care one way or the other...' (10) omitting the rest of that sentence...
Loneliness:
'Beyond some trees, across the sand, a great neon sign of a roadhouse glowed red. Hingham always went there for a beer when he was tired of writing. He was very lonely, he wanted to get back to New York. It was sad to see his tall figure receding in the dark as we drove away, just like the other figures in New York and New Orleans: they stand uncertainly underneath immense skies, and everything about them is drowned. Where go? what do? what for? ––sleep. But this foolish gang was bending forward.' (167)
'I struggled and hurried to New York, and one night I was standing in a dark street in Manhattan and called up to the window of a loft where I thought my friends were having a party. But a pretty girl stuck her head out the window and said, "Yes? Who is it?" "Sal Paradise," I said, and heard my name resound in the sad and empty street.' (306)
'At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night...All my life I'd had white ambitions; that was why I'd abandoned a good woman like Terry in the San Joaquin Valley...' (180). Some good honest insights here (like what are white ambitions and what has modernity pushed out at the expense of certain visions of success?)... at the same time it's very difficult to find sympathy for Sal here..................
Similar disillusionment with modernity: 'They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it. They didn't know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as they someday, and stretching out our hands in the same, same way. Our broken Ford, old thirties upgoing America Ford, rattled through them and vanished in dust.' (299).
Example of great description:
''In no time at all we were back on the main highway and that night I saw the entire state of Nebraska unroll before my eyes. A hundred and ten miles an hour straight through, an arrow road, sleeping towns, no traffic, and the Union Pacific streamliner falling behind us in the moonlight. I wasn't frightened at all that night; it was perfectly legitimate to go 110 and talk and have all the Nebraska towns– Ogallala, Gothenburg, Kearney, Grand Island, Columbus– unreel with dreamlike rapidity as we roared ahead and talked. It was a magnificent car; it could hold the road like a boat holds on water. Gradual curves were its singing ease.' (229)
Sal's despair peculiarly in speaking with girls who seem to have lost a joy for life; he has these conversations twice, this is the second time: 'I took up a conversation with a gorgeous country girl...She was dull. She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do.' (242)
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I feel weird giving a pretty high rating to a book that is so unenjoyable at so many points.
The plot more often than not feels slow and overburdened. And Kerouac’s racism and misogyny cannot and should not be ignored.
But I appreciate the commitment to the philosophy and belief that the little details are that special, secret sauce of life, the things that truly matter. When I view On The Road in this way: as less of a finished result and more as a moving target — something to be chased — it becomes much more special. There is a wholeness to it.
I appreciate Kerouac’s refusal of a style of writing and more importantly a style of living in which one perfectly revises and reshuffles and plans their story and their life to be perfect, idyllic, controlled… life often does not afford us this luxury to begin with. A life is not a finished product but something continuously moving and changing and perhaps at times, something that is quite ugly
He seems to lay bare his worst qualities and times and choices (as well as some of his best ones) in pursuit of embodying that “Troubles, you see, is the generalization word for what God exists in” (111).
I think the pursuit of this philosophy — that one ought to love every good and bad bit of life and do so with their entire soul — through the written word rises one step above considerations of plot. Of course, it depends on what you’re looking for. If you want a book to enjoy and get really wrapped up in, this may not be it; it wasn’t that for me. But it, like the adventures it describes, remains an intriguing exploration that merits exploration. And maybe I’ll return to it one day. It’s an incredible book about life!
Some of my favorite lines/passages:
“The car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives” (197).
“Something would come of it yet. There’s always more, a little further — it never ends. They sought to find new phrases after Shearing’s explorations; they tried hard. They writhed and twisted and blew. Every now and then a clear harmony cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men’s souls to joy. They found it, they lost, they wrestled for it, they found it again, they laughed, they moaned — and Dean sweated at the table and told them to go, go, go” (229-230).
“Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, or actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. All of it inside endless and beginningless emptiness. Pitiful forms of ignorance” (241).
“We all decided to tell our stories, but one by one, and Stan was first. “We’ve got a long way to go,” preambled Dean, “and so you must take every indulgence and deal with every single detail you can bring to mind — and still it won’t all be told” (257).
The plot more often than not feels slow and overburdened. And Kerouac’s racism and misogyny cannot and should not be ignored.
But I appreciate the commitment to the philosophy and belief that the little details are that special, secret sauce of life, the things that truly matter. When I view On The Road in this way: as less of a finished result and more as a moving target — something to be chased — it becomes much more special. There is a wholeness to it.
I appreciate Kerouac’s refusal of a style of writing and more importantly a style of living in which one perfectly revises and reshuffles and plans their story and their life to be perfect, idyllic, controlled… life often does not afford us this luxury to begin with. A life is not a finished product but something continuously moving and changing and perhaps at times, something that is quite ugly
He seems to lay bare his worst qualities and times and choices (as well as some of his best ones) in pursuit of embodying that “Troubles, you see, is the generalization word for what God exists in” (111).
I think the pursuit of this philosophy — that one ought to love every good and bad bit of life and do so with their entire soul — through the written word rises one step above considerations of plot. Of course, it depends on what you’re looking for. If you want a book to enjoy and get really wrapped up in, this may not be it; it wasn’t that for me. But it, like the adventures it describes, remains an intriguing exploration that merits exploration. And maybe I’ll return to it one day. It’s an incredible book about life!
Some of my favorite lines/passages:
“The car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives” (197).
“Something would come of it yet. There’s always more, a little further — it never ends. They sought to find new phrases after Shearing’s explorations; they tried hard. They writhed and twisted and blew. Every now and then a clear harmony cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men’s souls to joy. They found it, they lost, they wrestled for it, they found it again, they laughed, they moaned — and Dean sweated at the table and told them to go, go, go” (229-230).
“Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, or actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. All of it inside endless and beginningless emptiness. Pitiful forms of ignorance” (241).
“We all decided to tell our stories, but one by one, and Stan was first. “We’ve got a long way to go,” preambled Dean, “and so you must take every indulgence and deal with every single detail you can bring to mind — and still it won’t all be told” (257).
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I think I hate Kerouac im so sorry
third time reading. kerouac is a gross needy loser and he sucks but this book launched me on my own crazy american road trip and probably played a role in my New Mexican side quest so. in america. when the sun goes down and i sit on the old broken down river pier watching the long long skies over new jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable bulge over to the west coast and all that road going and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it and