1957, Penguin 20: Great Books of the 20th Century - 4/20

This 281 pages has been a long road for me as I was traveling to places and was actually feeling the book...

'On the Road' is a Beat Classic which is a pioneering milestone with other works for the era of the 1950s to be framed as 'Beat Generation', even The Beatles were inspired by it (notice the spelling despite its pronunciation). These revolutionary pieces were written in a very unique way which Kerouac calls 'Spontaneous Prose'. This book listed as fiction is actually a thinly veiled memoir of the author which includes many Beat authors like Neal Cassady (being the hero Dean Moriarty), Allen Ginsberg & William S. Burroughs.

This book is an Odyssey of aimless wanderlust, infidelities, bigamy, meanderings, and lawlessness of the post-WWII men with no frontier to conquer. Though the vice this portrays and inspires generations of exuberant, passionate and adventure seekers to travel and to lead a different life away from all the materialistic bounds on the road with no destination.

Here I can see much hatred for this masterpiece due to all the hype and self-destructive nature. I think its fascinating that how people come to meet such ends.
Some might say it is the sexy, dangerous devil in Cassady that somehow tempts others like Kerouac into ablative behavior. I think that the seeds of self-obliteration lie dormant in the person waiting for a Cassady or a bottle or a drug to come along and start the process. It's going to happen; the cause is unimportant.

Below quote at the climax symbolizes this perfectly - ' the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes “Awww! ". Thus at the end Dean was a sputtering but a beautiful Roman candle. The candle also symbolizes the generosity of the mad travelers which is deeply described.

The work is so touchingly vibrant, I would recommend it to everyone who hustles to explore the so-called Classics...

A View from the Couch

OTR has received some negative reviews lately, so I thought I would try to explain my rating.

This novel deserves to lounge around in a five star hotel rather than languish in a lone star saloon.

Disclaimer

Please forgive my review. It is early morning and I have just woken up with a sore head, an empty bed and a full bladder.

Confesssion

Let me begin with a confession that dearly wants to become an assertion.

I probably read this book before most of you were born.

So there!

Wouldn't you love to say that!

If only I had the courage of my convictions.

Instead, I have only convictions, and they are many and varied.

However, I am sure that by the end of my (this) sentence, I shall be released.

Elevated to the Bar

I read OTR in my teens, which were spread all over the end of the 60's and the beginning of the 70's.

My life was dominated by Scouting for Boys.

I mean the book, not the activity.

My mantra was "be prepared", although at the time I didn't realise that this actually meant "be prepared for war".

After reading OTR, my new mantra was "be inebriated".

Mind you, I had no idea what alcohol tasted like, but it sounded good.

Gone were two boys in a tent and three men in a boat.

OTR was about trying to get four beats in a bar, no matter how far you'd travelled that day.

Typing or Writing

Forget whether it was just typing rather than writing.

That was just Truman Capote trying to dot one of Dorothy Parker's eyes.

This is like focusing on the mince instead of the sausage.

All Drums and Symbols

You have to appreciate what OTR symbolised for people like me.

It was "On the Road", not "In the House" or "In the Burbs".

It was about dynamism, not passivity.

It wasn't about a stream of consciousness, it was about a river of activity.

It was about "white light, white heat", not "white picket fences".

Savouring the Sausage

OK, your impressions are probably more recent than mine.

Mine are memories that have been influenced by years of indulgence. (I do maintain that alcohol kills the unhealthy brain cells first, so it is actually purifying your brain.)

I simply ask that you overlook the mince and savour the sausage.

Beyond Ephemerality

I would like to make one last parting metaphor.

I have misappropriated it from the musician, Dave Graney.

He talks about "feeling ephemeral, but looking eternal".

Dave comes from the Church of the Latter Day Hipsters.

He is way cooler than me, he even looks great in leather pants, in a spivvy kinda way.

However, I think the point he was making (if not, then the point I am making) is that most of life is ephemeral. It just happens and it's gone forever.

However, in Dave's case, the way he looks, the way he feels, he turns it into something eternal.

It's his art, his music, our pleasure, our memories (at least until we die).

Footnotes on Cool

Creativity and style are our last chance attempt to defy ephemerality and mortality and become eternal.

Yes, all that stuff between the bookends of OTR might be typing, it might be preserving ephemerality that wasn't worthy or deserving.

However, the point is the attempt to be your own personal version of cool.

Heck, no way am I cool like the Beats or James Dean or Marlon Brando or Jack Nicholson or Clint Eastwood or Keith Richards or Camille Paglia.

However, I am trying to live life beyond the ephemeral.

That's what OTR means to me.

If it doesn't mean that to you, hey, that's alright. I'm OK, you're OK. It's cool.

Original posted: March 01, 2011

I made it through On the Road on my second attempt in order to prepare for a Literary Gladiators discussion. This second attempt required a push that included getting up early for the sake of finishing 86 pages in a few hours time, but I did it. It was not like it was a bad novel in any which way, but just an okay one at best. I was drawn into the Beats Movement through Allen Ginsberg, who I can also say I credit for being an all-out lover and enthusiast for reading literature, but specifically poetry and literary fiction. Jack Kerouac was not as enjoyable. The word that I feel seems to be used the most when it comes to Kerouac is "rambly" and I must say that I agree and when I mean "rambly," I mean talking about a lot without getting to the point.

As for the novel itself: we follow a first-person account of Sal Paradise from Paterson, New Jersey that idolizes Dean Moriarty and is looking to find an ideal way of life wherever it may be. Sal makes his way to Denver, but finds himself in so many places and so many situations throughout the text. Dean, on the other hand, is in and out of relationships (and some of these overlap with one another) and is accumulating plenty of children with more than just one woman. Being the sporadic novel that this is, Sal's adventures include getting and maintaining jobs, finding women, and just figuring out his place in the world at the age at which he is at. Outside of that, there is not much else to say about this work.

People have hailed this as the prose equivalent to Ginsberg's Howl and people can argue that is could take the mold of a "Great American Novel." I would argue that this novel is overrated. It did not have an area of concentration and while there are arguments where it did not need to have an area of concentration, it was just something that did not provide me with an opportunity to care for this work in any which way. I really did not like any of the characters in this text. I was not fond of Sal and his shallow outlook on life and, like many of others, I thought that Dean was a piece of garbage. Of course, there are arguments that can be made regarding why Dean is the way he is, but he brings the worst out of Sal and demonstrates a life of poor and harmful habits.

There are two instances where this book can be viewed in a redeeming life. First, this work can be viewed in a critical manner. There is a lot to think about when it comes to Sal's behavior being parallel to someone in their teens or early twenties that idolizes phonies and moves around until they find what they feel is the right opportunity and then lose satisfaction pretty quickly before moving again. Another redeeming factor is how everyone is based on someone in Kerouac's own life. Sal Paradise is based on Kerouac, while Dean Moriarty is based on Neal Cassady. Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs even have people based off of them in Carlo Marx and Old Bull Lee, respectively. Many of the characters, though, are based on people that Kerouac knows, but the general public does not.

On the Road is only meant to be judged by its face value if it is taken in the context of being a Beats era work. It is not about a guy's journey west, for he obtains this pretty quickly. It is the adventures that take place afterward that really continue to drive this story. To me, reading this was more of a task than a delight or an experience.

You can find my Literary Gladiators discussion about this book (containing spoilers) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLcyh...

I listened to the audiobook of this as I had tried to read a physical copy but never managed to get very far at all.

Overall it just felt a little pointless..
I probably would have appreciated it a bit more if the on the road journey was more linear. Instead it was very back and forth and I lost interest.

There was some really nice writing but not enough considering the length of the novel

‘I wished I was on the same bus as her. A pain stabbed my heart as it did everytime I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world of ours’

A few months back I read Stephen Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage", a harrowing account of cross-country exploration made poignant by the character studies of adventurers Lewis & Clark. Undeterred in their mission to map the uncharted territories, the account of their expedition reminds readers of the vast wonders encompassed within America's borders. Equally awe-inspiring from the scope of their accomplishment and the natural beauty encountered, I felt compelled to perhaps make my own pilgrimage west, alas any eventual voyage will lack the thrilling sense of discovery (of course also safe from the considerable threats) evoked in the Ambrose text. Unfortunately, after reading Kerouac's book, depicting a relatively worthless industrial landscape, I am reminded of the very real human egotism driving behavior and far less enthusiastic for far-flung ventures.

The book's common thread seems to be characters who will travel thousands of miles in search of a hamburger. Traveling to major urban cities leaves these restless souls unsatisfied until the climatic trip to Mexico, treated reverentially in a sharp contrast from the detachment associated with America. F'n Mexico?! An orgiastic trip to a Mexican brothel where the narrator leers at a teenager is the novel's spiritual apex, a stirring reminder of the potential for human depravity but a complete disappointment for readers attempting to understand Kerouac's considerable legacy. The narrator bizarrely swoons over companion Dean Mortiary epitomize unbridled living but whose M.O. depends on leeching from others and fathering children out of wedlock. References to Dean's own loser father permit sympathy for the man, but as an iconic figure he was shockingly repellent, just one in the litany of uninteresting characters peppering the novel.

Readers desiring a truly fresh perspective should just buy some psyclobin mushrooms and avoid the time you would otherwise waste reading this book. Far from understanding the genesis of the beat generation, I read Kerouac craft a self-indulgent justification for aimless wandering and its pitiable virtues.

کتابیه درباره‌ی جاده‌ها و مفت‌سواری‌ها و خانم‌بازی‌ها و آقابازی‌ها و شادنوشی‌ها و دود کردن‌ها و پارتی‌ها و صدها عشرت و خریت دیگه!
کتابی نبود که باب میل من باشه و دلیل اینکه امتیاز کمتری ندادم فقط سبک و طنزش بود.

الآن لست محتاجا لاوراق النقاد وتنظيرات الأكاديميين وإجراءات التطببقيبن
تحتاج فقط ورقة خضراء
تلتقطها يدك من غصن ينتظر نظرتك
يمنحك قطعة من نفسه
لانه رآك مقطوعا من شجرة مثله
ومثل الأقلام الرصاص الكثيرة التي تركت في يدك خطوطها
تقرأ
على الطريق
لجاك كيرواك
وتدرك معنى الرحلة والحب والصداقة والموسيقى
ترى الشوارع التي رسمت خطواتك عليها مسارك
الشمس التي استخرجت منك ظلك
البحر الذي أنطبعت عليه أمسيات قمرك
أنفاس الأشجار والنيل واحجار البيوت
نسائم العصر في العصور كلها
شباك الصالة المفتوح على الحارة
أصوات باعة تمر النخيل السامق والطماطم المجنونة والكنافة التي تتشرب شربات أصابع الأمهات
شراعة الباب وإيقاع خطوات رضا على السلم
بنات مدرسة التجارة وأصابعهن تضرب حروف الآلات الكاتبة
وروايات محفوظ
وصوت سمير يناديك لتنضم لفريق أرض الغنام
َمشوار ميت عقبة لمشاهدة تدريبات الزمالك
ساندويتشات فول مطعم دقة
مكتبة شارع العلمين
مسرحيات قصور الثقافة على مسرح السامر
وعرض فرقة رضا في البالون
صحابك بأصواتهم المنغمة الضاحكة وهي تنطق الأسماء المستعارة
حديقة سفنكس والشطرنج الصغير
أحاديث رياض الصالحين بعد صلاة الفجر
صاجات الكعك المكتوب عليها أسماء الأسرة والجيران
صوت عبد الحليم يقول مخاطبا الليل في موعود
ياللي شفت في عنيا الدموع وانا دايما راجع وحيد
ترى لحظات تكوينك بين السطور
أجمل الروايات هي التي نقرأ فيها قصتنا بالتوازي مع متخيل الفن
تطبيقات السرد رائعة
وأكثر عبقرية من آلات الزمن في الخيال العلمي
تنقلك في الأزمنة والأَمكنة
تستجمع نفسك المتناثرة
تبتسم لك احبة كانت هنا وستظل
تحفظ لك صداقات صافية
تتخذ من نسيجها صورا لاعماق شخصيات لم ترها بعد
تضيف لرصيد شحنك الإنساني
جاك كيرواك يحكي
على الطريق
وانت تدخل دهاليز تفاصيل حواديت تاريخك
بريق جواهر المغارة يوقظ نجوم رحلتك
عمق الثواني
موسيقى البلوز وإيقاع الحياة الإفريقية يكتب نوتة الشجن في صخب القارة الجديدة
سليم جايلارد يغني كما يتنفس المختنقين من دمار الحروب في استراحة سلام يتمنون ان يعم العالم
الذكريات التي ترفض الاندثار في صناديق المدن
كل واحد له طريقه
لكن طرفنا تلتقي
تمد أياديهأ بالسلام
تستضيف الطرق بعضها بعضا
تسمح للارض الغريبة بالمرور
الطرق شخصيات لها حكايات
مثل فضل الله عثمان
رواية على الطريق لجاك كيرواك
تفتح بابا بالطول والعرض
لمحبة الناس والأماكن والأشياء الصغيرة والوقت الجميل
وفيها رحلة البحث عن الأب
لنصل قصتنا بالتاريخ
سنوات عالمنا تتكثف في السرد
دوران النجوم والكواكب في المجرة
وماكينة الطباعة ترص الأحداث في شارع الصفحات
وهوامش بالمشاعر لم يرها أحد
حروف تتفتح في رياض الحكايات
ساعات ثوانيها سنوات جميلة
إنها فيزياء الفن
أفضية متشعبة من العمر
لقلوب أخذتها طرق بعيدة
والراوي حلم
معلق بسهر الأحبة
يقص آثارهم
في رواية طريق
في ورقة نقد بفصل السرد تكتب رواية الطريق نفسها بوصفها نوع أدبي، ترى العالم من منظور الحركة، تقنية عاكسة للثقافة الأمريكية المنطلقة بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية في طرق الحياة

There are people, I’m quite prepared to admit, that I am more than happy to spend time with – even an entire week if needs be - as long, that is, as they agree to remain within proper and predictable boundaries. And often those boundaries are pretty well fixed by the covers of the book that I find them in. Look, I don’t mind if you don’t wash or you get so drunk or stoned or both that you find yourself fast asleep hanging onto a toilet to make sure you don’t fall off the world. I don’t care if you wake up in the morning after your head has slid down the side of the toilet and you find yourself covered in proof that US sailors aren’t as accurate shots as they make themselves out to be. I don’t care if you turn up your jazz records so loud that it wakes every single bloody kid down the street so that they bawl out at the full stretch of their lungs from midnight right through to 6 am - just as long as all of those kids and everyone else living in that street who’s bleary eyed and up half the night shut the hell up as soon as I close the covers of the book.

Ah yes…

I’m not proud, I’ll admit it, I’m infinitely too straight to ever spend any real quality time with Mr Kerouac and his assorted friends. If I was there with them you’d have no trouble finding me. I’d be the guy in the back seat of their car with his eyes tight shut trying to pretend to be asleep, even if I would be listening, listening intently. Just the same, I already know that the bad driving would force my eyelids open just as surely as if matchsticks had been propped in there under the lashes. Yes, yes, I would find the driving the most difficult thing to deal with. I’ve never taken any sorts of objective measurements or done the comparisons that would need to be done, but I just don’t think my penis is small enough to make me need to risk death by car accident so as to prove my manhood. Shit no.

Still, this novel rings out and over and through a million imitations. It might well be a sad-but-true fact I’m telling you here, but my bet is that outright plagiarists have made ten gazillion times more than Kerouac ever did out of his beats. They’ve copied him in film and in book and in song. And I’m prepared to say here that there is no question that some of those imitations are nearly as good as Pepsi and some, well, some are more like home-brand Cola, but there have always been others that are not just the real thing, but they’ve even had a splash of whisky added – all pure and inspired. Those imitators taste like originals, either that or they have had their ears whispered into as if by the devil himself (so that it’s just like walking down the middle of a street where all lampposts have their streetlights smashed, but you’re okay and you’re going to be okay because right beside you is Tom Waits himself, and it’s Waits with a saxophone moaning low from an open window of a tenement building here-abouts – like he did that night on track nine from Nighthawks at the Diner).

This is a book affected by the rhythms of Jazz and it shows in virtually every sentence. He even mentions one of my all time favourite songs as he’s heading down the road somewhere on a particularly good night – Billie Holiday’s version of Lover Man sticks in his head (and can you really imagine a better song to have stuck there?) It is hard to read this book without a soundtrack of Dizzy Gillespie or Thelonious Monk or maybe even the Lady herself humming in your head, though maybe not singing, maybe just vamping one-handed on some just out-of-tune upright piano while the bass man taps his stings half-heartedly, half-heartedly and no more. Come here and find me a blindman for this piano. Still, there’s always music here, lots of music. And I don’t mean just in reference, but in the beat of the words as they hit the page. Christ, maybe even as residue sound from the keystrokes tapping against the paper scrunched up in an old manual typewriter.

Ah yes, ah yes…

Like I said, I’m just too straight for the madness of all this. The crazed brothel scene near the end with the young Latin American girls plastered and passed out and violated in expectation of little more than enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes – even if, perhaps, they received much more than that, you know, in the end, even if no one seemed to know how much was actually spent. It was clear from the beginning how much would be taken from all of these all-too-young little angels. Yes, that was all too much for my all too dull and far too prudish categorical imperatives. I struggled and I felt for those young girls and for what was being taken from them for a fist full of paper worth virtually nothing.

There was lots of that – lots of the sorts of things that good sons and good employees and good fathers struggle up against and fight up against and find just all too confronting. And I won’t hear any of your half-baked psychological bullshit about repressed desires. I’m not in the least trying to run away from what I want the most. I’m just warning you, that’s all; especially since while reading this book you’ll be brought up smack face-to-face close and right up far on the inside of this guy's head – and some of the places he has plans to take you, well, they aren’t on any Women’s Weekly package plane and bus tour itinerary. I mean that for sure. And your passport, well, that not going to do you any good either, not where he’s taking you. It is best you know right now that if someone asks you for your passport along this road then it’s just as likely that they’re planning to steal it from you. Like I said, I’m warning you, that’s all.

Listen to that. That trilling on the piano. That isn’t just there to show off the virtuosity of the guy with his fingers a blur over the keys; no, it’s not that. That’s there to remind you that round about midnight you’re going need to skip and step and jump onto a fright-train and to not forget that you’ve only got one shot and that’s when she slows up just a little bit on the bend. The trill is to remind you that every drink you have between now and then is going to cost you double as you run for that open door, the one with the hand sticking out of the dark and with someone you think you know calling out your name. But think nothing of it now, my friend, put it right out of your mind.

Although, if it was me I would recommend you remember – for there’s not a single person here who doesn’t love you, who isn’t your brother; just as there’s not a single person here who won’t leave you for dead out in the freezing cold of the night or abandon you in a strange city with your head stuck down a toilet bowl because the ice cream they recommended you eat this morning, the ice cream they said was a health food, really didn’t agree with the whisky they passed you this afternoon just as they nudged you in the ribs and pointed out that pretty little 15 year old Mexican girl sitting all alone and lonely and lost somewhere deep down in almond brown of her own eyes. The same brown eyes she used to furtively check you over with – what? Has that been for the third time now? Remember, there’s not one of them that won’t leave you to fend for yourself even as they drive off in their fifteen cent taxi with a quick glance back over their shoulder to see you walking stark naked and crying down the street because the Mexican dream girl you'd been talking to finally did get on her Greyhound Bus after she turned away from you spilling your guts into the gutter all almond coloured from the vanilla icecream and whisky you'd mixed together for their health giving properties. And damn it if you weren’t certain, as certain as you’ve ever been, that you had finally and for the first time in your life fallen in love and this time, this time it was for sure. For sure.

You’ll either love this book or hate it – cos that's the way this book is. Do you understand what I saying to you? You don’t have to love it just because it’s seminal – if you’re going to love it the fact it is seminal won’t add anything to the pleasure, just as if you are going to hate it the fact it spawned other works of art isn’t going to help in any way either.

Ah, I say, ah yes, that’s got to be me now, yes…

I read this book when I was 20 and I loved it, it spoke like Truth to my Heart, and every summer I and one or some of my increasingly hairy friends got on the road West, to the Rockies, to the Grand Tetons, to backpack and climb and breathe in for a time the pure air of the West. Freedom, man! Back to Nature, one with Nature. At its best the writing was a celebration of all that is good in life, of love, of intoxications and lusts of various kinds. On the road! Romantic. Ecstatic. 5 stars.

At 30 I read it again to see if it was still vibrant and relevant and happy to be all alive. I was looking for a touchstone, spinning out of control, recently divorced, directionless, had bought (what I thought was, for no clear reason) a hot car, spent money I didn't have on a cool stereo system, started to live and drink and drive faster and faster. I had been teaching at that point eight years; My life was in a crisis of my own making. I was deeply disappointed in myself as what I read in the writing not only didn't reinforce my bad choices but reflected on my own excesses and mistakes and sadness; I found the writing turgid, narcissistic, badly edited, somewhat misogynist, drunken wastrel prose, though I saw better this time in it the deep sadness underlying the wild surface. I thought it was writing of a certain time in your life, but when you grow up you leave those childish things behind. I tried to get my life together and went to grad school. On the road, eh. I had found it in some ways juvenile and about selfish individualism this time, mine and his. 2 stars.

At 60 I am in my 38th year of teaching, now in my happy third marriage, with five kids I feel I am lucky to have and be able to support who all still love me. I am happy to be alive and healthy. I survived some very rocky years when much worse might have ensued. So when I took a road trip with my friend George to see my friend Corey in Boston and see Fenway Park, a bucket list item, we had a blast (notwithstanding a poem I wrote about it that makes fun of all the high expectations amidst all the rain). Loved the trip. We visited Kerouac's gravesite in Lowell and in the mist of the day hovered over George's IPhone to listen to Kerouac's own voice reading his words from "October in the Railroad Earth."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hjPZ...

The prose I find on my third reading is poetic, deeply committed to working class and democratic values, and a celebration of life. When I get home I start to reread all the Kerouac I still have in the house, including On the Road, which I find I love like an old friend I have had been "on the outs" with, as my Dad used to say. We are pals again, we love being on the road! Romantic, just what I need in this phase of my life, connecting passionate language to life. It's a little uneven, it's not always really great language or storytelling, it feels sometimes like a young man's diary, but I also like that for the immediacy of that, too, and it is important to me for the joy and sadness in it. 4 stars. Not because it is one of the greatest books of all time for all people. It's a "boy book" in what are sometimes painful ways to read, because the women always seem peripheral to the men. But 4 stars + because it is a very personal book right now for me, speaking to me in ways I need to listen to, especially the darker aspects of it, when it veers dangerously close to madness and regret.

Jack Kerouac reading from On the Road in the surreal circumstance of an appearance on The Steve Allen Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLpN...

The book that basically skyrocketed Kerouac to fame. And yet is still remains my least favourite of his novels, and I've read quite a few now. Even tried reading it again recently, and just lost interest somewhere after the halfway point. Pity.

I'm supposed to like On the Road, right? Well, I don't. I hate it and I always have. There are a lot of reasons why I hate it. I find Kerouac's attitude toward the world pathetically limited and paternalistic. In n  On the Roadn he actually muses about how much he wishes that he could have been born "a Negro in the antebellum South," living a simple life free from worry, and does so seemingly without any sense of irony. On every page, the book is about how Kerouac (a young, white, middle-class, solipsistic alcoholic) feels, and nothing more. But that's only one reason I hate this book. The main reason I hate it is because, for me, reading Kerouac's prose is almost physically painful. I love the ramblings of self-centered drunks when they're self-deprecating, ironic, and/or funny, but Kerouac was none of these things. He was a pretentious, self-important bore who produced some of the most painfully bad and inconsequential prose of the 20th century. Or any century.

Another edit, January, 2017, which I am re-visiting because people want to make abortions illegal again and they are voting to close down abortion clinics and to prevent girls and women from having birth control even if they were raped, or have no desire for babies, or have no money or place to live or any means whatsoever to feed and educate children, and the fathers have refused ALL responsibility and have no means to support their babies:

Below is my 2010 newbie GR review, which I wrote trying to remember what this book was about because I hadn't read it since the early 1970's.

Maybe you have to be a guy to be enchanted by this book. I found myself curling my lip in disgust, and yes, disdain (when I read this in the 1970's). In the end, when I forced myself to finish it because of its famousness, I kept thinking what a bunch of losers. I probably missed something there. Like a lack of understanding for the complete abdication of all reason and responsibility.

Returning to 2017 thought:

I am not as horrified by this disguised true, if partially censored for literary and legal reasons, memoir of abusing drugs and alcohol, of having sex with 12-year-old Mexican children and other underage teen girls and young women, of making babies and abandoning them to complete poverty, and loving every outlaw second of it, as much as I am horrified and afraid because many college boys love and admire Jack Kerouac, the author and 'Dean', his BF, who barely control the puke surging into their mouths throughout the book, while they drive and visit drug house after drug house. Kerouac honestly revealed how they felt like spewing over the breasts of the Mexican child prostitutes beneath their thrusts, not because it was a child, but because of being physically sick from all the alcohol and ten types of drugs circulating around in their blood. (Actually, Kerouac could barely sexually perform because of the alcohol and drugs.)

I cannot understand why many young males think it is so cool to desert their underage and young adult girlfriends, after having fathered babies with them, leaving them completely without money, housing and food, without any means to survive whatsoever, as Kerouac and 'Dean' did. The author clearly and fully discloses he is utterly aware this is depraved behavior, and yet many male readers immediately craved to emulate this depraved destructive behavior in the 1970's - and maybe now?!?!

I want to clarify my giving this book one star. It is not because the book is bad. The book is a five-star read, and the author was an amazingly good writer. This book deserves awards and acclaim. It is that many of the book's male readers who approve of the behavior in the book who are giving me nightmares!

For the record, I am not against recreational use of drugs and alcohol.

'Oopsie' babies are no fucking goddamn joke. Some men and women have NO understanding that a baby needs committed parental love, a minimum of $20,000 a year in personal and household supplies and medical care, to give a human child a happy fulfilled life AND to get a mainstream secular education, if to be a healthy, sane responsible, working adult. If you want a goddamn happy responsible population of happy responsible sane families who do not need welfare you have to have fucking money and mature adults capable of love to raise healthy educated sane kids!

Below is my re-read of 2013:

uPdAtE: reread March 3, 2013.

I felt moved to reread this because it's on many club read selections. I thought, maybe my memory of this book from three decades ago is faulty.

It was not. It's a drug diary, a beautifully written record of debauchery, failure and self-destruction. When I was 20, I was mystified at all the fanboys, and I mean BOYS, who adored this book, carried it around, reread it endlessly. They used it to ask their parents for loans of money so that they could go to Mexico. Their parents, innocent of any awareness about Kerouac, gave them the money, unknowing what the book was about or unaware that the boys wanted to go there for drugs and prostitutes. I was also unaware, thinking it was some sort of literary trip as well, since mostly college boys made this trip.

A boyfriend clued me in.

Now, I'm an ancient, having sowed wild oats, having had drama and trauma (but not similar to this book) married, settled down. Here I am at GR, seeing this book all famous and everything, and the fanboys (and girls) are slavering all over this book once again.

There is no question Kerouac was talented, wrote exquisitely and true to his life. I would not DREAM of banning this book or prevent it from being read, even if I could. It should be available, read, and studied. He totally was a great writer. However, he died at age 47 because of alcoholism in 1969. I think this biographical information should be prominently displayed on the front cover. It is not. I think it should be sold as a semi-fictionalized autobiographical drug diary. it is not.

I think Kerouac wanted to describe what the 'beat down' life was, that it gave him relief and joy, while at the same time it was horribly self-destructive and ruinous. For me, he succeeded in describing how AWFUL to live like this was, even while it thrilled him, drew him on like a moth to self-immolating flame. But I appear to be in the minority in groking this. Millions of fans, primarily young men, see this as a justification to be as wild and obscene as Kerouac, reading into this book a confirmation that drug-use can be fun and adventurous. Obviously, either my reading is wrong or Kerouac failed in transmitting his message to the general reader. Once again, many people are reading this book as an instruction manual or impetus to abuse drugs, alcohol and women. I'm completely mystified. I guess men and some women still feel justified by this book instead of reflective on the use of drugs, perhaps still being given the impression by big-name critics, newspaper book reviews and millions of fanboys that it is not a book about how people die young, destroy families, wipe out the future of children and perpetuate needless abuse and misery, but instead are understanding it as 'live fast, die young' romanticism. For THIS reason, I'm giving the book one star.

This was a GREAT literary drug diary, and it is upfront about the personal/family abuse and mayhem. Personally, it horrified me - not because of the disgusting pigsty life Kerouac indicated he lived in, but because he killed himself off living it, a tragedy, unable to overcome his addictions. My horror also comes from his unrestrained joy in the destruction he caused to family members, girlfriends and friends in this not-very-disguised autobiography. Horror comes from his best friend, Dean's, even worse preying upon young girls, friends, family, total strangers, wives and his own children. Dean, the disguised Neal Cassidy, died in 1968. To me, he was a morally depraved individual if he was sane, but who knows? The only sure thing is he had a complete indifference to human life. He craved people being hurt; for him, people being tricked and made helpless by his depredations gave him a laugh. What does that indicate? Kerouac wanted to BE him, and what does that indicate?

While I feel clear in my reading of the book that Kerouac understood that this was a bad way to live, but couldn't stop enjoying it, and his book is a historical and psychological literary dissection of his 'living beat down', the number of readers that are truly understanding the book this way appears to be in the low numbers. It's not a guidebook, in my opinion, nor is it absolution or permission. Kerouac was diagnosed early in his life with a form of schizophrenia. Who knows what he actually was, but that he had some sort of psychiatric problem is clear. He never thought of himself as a role model, and his book indicates he knew he was being evil. He simply had no interest in being anything else.

People, if you are with someone who wants to model him/herself on Kerouac, unless you want to die in the backdraft or be robbed or go to prison, run.