Before I start, I would like to thank Beth Kelly for giving me her copy of this book. I had seen it on her bookshelf and (recognizing that it was on my list) asked to borrow it. "You can not only borrow it, you can keep it," she said, with what seemed like inexplicable glee. She explained that an ex-boyfriend had given her the book and that she no longer had any use for it.
On the Road is an autobiographical book with the names changed, perhaps to protect the innocent. Jack and his "beat generation" friends crisscross the country in the late 1940s, doing a variety of drugs, and stealing gasoline and groceries (and even cars) when they run low on money. They disrespect and mistreat women ranging from Mexican prostitutes to their own mothers and aunts. Why do I care?
I did, however, get caught up in Kerouac's desultory idylls describing his drives across the continent. I've driven across the country numerous times, and for me it's always been highly memorable and extremely enjoyable. I relished the poetic language Kerouac used to describe the unmistakable scent the of the Mississippi River (which my boyhood home abutted):
Still, my cross-country drives have always been for the purpose of transporting myself between jobs. Kerouac did it just to have something to do. He did try to imbue his trip with deep quintessential meaning and tended to berate those he met along the way who didn't understand. I must admit that I don't find the idleness so inherently positive. I had some of the same objections to the idleness of the "lost generation" depicted in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (and which On the Road is often compared to). At least the former is just a novel, while the latter depicts actual events, including Kerouac's abetting the debauchery of (the real-life) Neal Cassady and his three (current or former) wives and four children (with varying degrees of legitimacy). I wound up feeling as rank and smelly as Mississippi River muck.
On the Road is an autobiographical book with the names changed, perhaps to protect the innocent. Jack and his "beat generation" friends crisscross the country in the late 1940s, doing a variety of drugs, and stealing gasoline and groceries (and even cars) when they run low on money. They disrespect and mistreat women ranging from Mexican prostitutes to their own mothers and aunts. Why do I care?
I did, however, get caught up in Kerouac's desultory idylls describing his drives across the continent. I've driven across the country numerous times, and for me it's always been highly memorable and extremely enjoyable. I relished the poetic language Kerouac used to describe the unmistakable scent the of the Mississippi River (which my boyhood home abutted):
And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River, dry in the summer haze, low water, with its big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up.Or a summer night in San Antonio:
It was fragrant and soft--the softest air I'd ever known--and dark, and mysterious, and buzzing.One time on my trip from Berkeley, California to Cambridge, Massachusetts after grad school, I stopped at some small motel somewhere in Missouri. I paid cash for the room, turned off my cell phone, and enjoyed the isolation, hiding from the world. If someone wanted to find me at that point, it would have taken hours (if not days) to discover my hiding place.
Still, my cross-country drives have always been for the purpose of transporting myself between jobs. Kerouac did it just to have something to do. He did try to imbue his trip with deep quintessential meaning and tended to berate those he met along the way who didn't understand. I must admit that I don't find the idleness so inherently positive. I had some of the same objections to the idleness of the "lost generation" depicted in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (and which On the Road is often compared to). At least the former is just a novel, while the latter depicts actual events, including Kerouac's abetting the debauchery of (the real-life) Neal Cassady and his three (current or former) wives and four children (with varying degrees of legitimacy). I wound up feeling as rank and smelly as Mississippi River muck.
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