هرچند در این کتاب، جک کرواک کمتر به کوله گردی و هیچ هایک پرداخته اما نسبت به کتاب (ولگردهای دارما ) دیوانگی های این کتاب بسیار بیشتر است. اعتراف می کنم که به اندازه دین در این کتاب دیوانه نیستم، و همین طور که در کتاب نشون میده این دیوانگی اورا در آستانه فروپاشی قرار میده( من بهش میگم جنون سفر)، ولی می تونم بگم به اندازه سَل دیوانه سفر و تجربه کردن هستم.
این کتاب بیشتر از اینکه یک داستان باشه مجموعه ای از 5 سفر هست که تنها نقطه مشترک اونها شخصیت ها هستند.
در آخر می تونم بگم که این کتاب قصد بیان کردن یک حرف و داره : گوربابای قواعد دست و پاگیر زندگی سفر و بچسب 

This is the book which has given me anxiety attacks on sleepless nights.
This is the book which has glared at me from its high pedestal of classical importance in an effort to browbeat me into finally finishing it.
And this is that book which has shamed me into feigning an air of ignorance every time I browsed any of the countless 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die lists.

Yes Jack Kerouac, you have tormented me for the past 3 years and every day I couldn't summon the strength to open another page of 'On the Road' and subject my brain to the all-too-familiar torture of Sal's sleep-inducing, infuriatingly monotonous narration.

Finally, I conquer you after nearly 3 years of dithering. I am the victorious one in the battle in which you have relentlessly assaulted my finer senses with your crassness and innate insipidity and dared me to plod on. I can finally beat my chest in triumph (ugh pardon the Tarzan-ish metaphor but a 1-star review deserves no better) and announce to the world that I have finished reading 'On the Road'. Oh what an achievement! And what a monumental waste of my time.

Dear Beat Generation classic, I can finally state without any fear of being called out on my ignorance that I absolutely hated reading you. Every moment of it.

Alternatively, this book can be named White Heterosexual Man's Misadventures and Chauvinistic Musings. And even that makes it sound much more interesting and less offensive than it actually is.

In terms of geographical sweep, the narrative covers nearly the whole of America in the 50s weaving its way in and out of Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco and many other major American cities. Through the eyes of Salvatore 'Sal' Paradise, a professional bum, we are given an extended peek into the lives of a band of merry have-nots, their hapless trysts with women, booze, drugs, homelessness, destitution, jazz as they hitchhike and motor their way through the heart of America.
Sounds fascinating right? (Ayn Rand will vehemently disagree though).

But no, it's anything but that. Instead this one just shoves Jack Kerouac's internalized white superiority, sexism and homophobia right in the reader's face in the form of some truly bad writing. This book might as well come with a caption warning any potential reader who isn't White or male or straight. I understand that this was written way before it became politically incorrect to portray women in such a poor light or wistfully contemplate living a "Negro's life" in the antebellum South. But there's an obvious limit to the amount of his vile ruminations I can tolerate.

n  "There was an old Negro couple in the field with us. They picked cotton with the same God-blessed patience their grandfathers had practiced in ante-bellum Alabama."n

Seriously? God-blessed patience?

Every female character in this one is a vague silhouette or a caricature of a proper human being. Marylou, Camille, Terry, Galatea are all frighteningly one-dimensional - they never come alive for the reader through Sal's myopic vision. They are merely there as inanimate props reduced to the status of languishing in the background and occasionally allowed to be in the limelight when the men begin referring to them as if they were objects.
Either they are 'whores' for being as sexually liberated as the men are or they are screaming wives who throw their husbands out of the house for being jobless, cheating drunks or they are opportunistic and evil simply because they do not find Sal or Dean or Remy or Ed or any of the men in their lives to be deserving of their trust and respect, which they truly aren't.

And sometimes, they are only worthy of only a one or two-line description like the following:-

n  "...I had been attending school and romancing around with a girl called Lucille, a beautiful Italian honey-haired darling that I actually wanted to marry"n

Look at Sal talking about a woman as if she were a breed of cat he wanted to rescue from the animal shelter.

n  "Finally he came out with it: he wanted me to work Marylou."n

Is Marylou a wrench or a machine of some kind?

And this is not to mention the countless instances of 'get you a girl', 'get girls', 'Let's get a girl' and other minor variations of the same strewn throughout the length of the book and some of Sal's thoughts about 'queers' which are equally revolting.

Maybe I am too much of a non-American with no ties to a real person who sees the Beat era through the lenses of pure nostalgia or maybe I am simply incapable of appreciating the themes of youthful wanderlust and living life with a perverse aimlessness or maybe it's the flat writing and appalling representation of women. Whatever the real reason(s) maybe, I can state with conviction that this is the only American classic which I tried to the best of my abilities to appreciate but failed.

چرا به این چیزها فکر می‌کنی وقتی مزارع طلایی پیشِ رویت است و همه جور حوادث نامنتظره در انتظارت است تا تو را به شگفتی بیاندازند و خوشحالت کنند که زنده ای و چنین چیزی را می‌بینی؟

همیشه از دیدن پروانه‌ها هیجان زده می‌شم و امشب که دارم ریویو رو می‌نویسم یکیشون مهمونم شده. یه پروانه خیلی زیبا که بدون در زدن از پنجره وارد اتاق شده. چند دقیقه بدون ترس رو انگشتام نشست و حالا باهم داریم به فرانک سیناترا گوش میدیم
لینک آهنگ

Let’s forget about tomorrow
فردا رو فراموش کنیم
Let’s forget about tomorrow for tomorrow never comes
بیا فراموشش کنیم چون فردا هیچ وقت نمیاد
Domani, forget domani
فردا! فردا رو فراموش کنیم
Let’s live for now and anyhow who needs domani?
بیا در این لحظه زندگی کنیم. کی نیاز به فردا داره؟
The moonlight, let’s share the moonlight
نور ماه! بیا تا نور ماه رو باهم قسمت کنیم.
Perhaps together we will never be again
شاید دیگه هیچ وقت باهم نباشیم...



نسل بیت یه معنی بیشتر نداره: زنده باد زندگی

جنگ جهانی به پایان رسیده ولی هنوز ترکش هایش آزار دهنده اند. ترکش هایی که روح انسان را زخمی کرده اند. جنگی که انسان را به تمام مدنیت و فرهنگش به شک انداخت و او را سرگردان کرد. حتی نویسنده‌های بزرگ زیر این همه وحشیت نمی‌توانستند پشت راست کنند و دیگر به ادبیات و هنر پشت‌گرم کنند. اما در زمانه سرخوردگی و افسردگی و ناتوانی که انسانِ درمانده نمی دانست چه راهی را در پیش گیرد، نسلی از نویسندگان بوجود آمد به نام "نسلِ بیت" که به تمام معنا زیستن را می‌خواستند تجربه کنند...خوره زندگی و لذت بودند....یعنی همین "زندگی" که خیلی وقت‌ها براحتی ازش بیزار می‌شیم، مقدس‌ترین کلمه برای نسل بیت بود. آنها بی‌پروا و شاعرانه به هرچی که زندگی را تهدید می‌کرد حمله می‌کردند. اینگونه شد که "آلن گینزبرگ" کشورش را هم به گا کشید و یکی از معروف‌ترین شعرهایش را سرود:

آمریکا برو خودت را با بمب اتمت بگا
حالم خوب نیست اذیتم نکن.

نسل بیت قوانین خودشان را داشتند و حتی دزدی را در حد نیاز مشروع می‌دانستند(بمانند سرخپوستان که شکار حیوانات را فقط برای نیاز انجام می‌دادند). اصل مهم‌شان زنده ماندن و لذت بردن از آن است و بخاطر همین تمام قوانین دست و پاگیر را می‌شکنند. نسل بیتی بودن یک زندگی کولی وار است پر از هیجان و هر فرصتی که دست بدهد خود را به راه زدن: راه زندگی است
تنها آدم‌هایی که باهاشان حال می‌کنم دیوانه‌هایند، آدم‌هایی که دیوانه‌ی زندگی‌اند، دیوانه‌ی حرف زدن‌اند، دیوانه‌ی نجات یافتن، در یک آن خوره‌ی همه‌چیز هستند، آدم‌هایی که هیچ‌وقت خمیازه نمی‌کشند و حرف‌های معمولی نمی‌زنند، فقط می‌سوزند، می‌سوزند و می‌سوزند

دنیا به نسل بیت نیاز داشت مثه یک شوک تا دوباره به زندگی برگردد. با این‌حال این نسل عمر کوتاهی داشت و کم کم به قول بوکوفسکی خیلی‌هاشون عاقلتر شدند و کت و شلوار پوشیدند و دست از دزدی و ولگردی و عیاشی کشیند و ساعت 8 ساعت سرکار رفتند. اما یکی از نتایج مهم نسل بیت بوجود آمدن نسل دوم بیت بود که بوکوفسکی سرآمد آنها بود که هیچوقت سرعقل هم نیومد


من هم از پلیس‌ها حالم بهم می‌خوره. در یک کلام چندش آورند:

پلیس آمریکا در حال جنگ روانی علیه آن دسته از امریکایی‌هاست که نمی‌تواند با سند و تهدید بترساندشان. نیروی پلیسِ ویکتوریایی است؛ از پنجره کپک‌زده سرک می‌کشد و می‌خواهد تو همه‌چیز تفحص کند، و اگر به قدر رضایت جرم وجود نداشت، می‌تواند ابداع کند. به قول لویی فردینان سلین «نُه ردیف جرم، یک ردیف ملال.» دین آنقدر دیوانه شده بود که می‌خواست برگردد ویرجینیا و به محض اینکه تفنگ گیر آورد مردک پلیس را بکشد


شبحی به نام تمدن که بمب‌ها روزی آن‌را از بین خواهند بُرد

سرخ‌پوست‌ها از ارتفاعات و پشت کوه‌ها آمده بودند پایین و دست دراز کرده بودند برای چیزی که فکر می‌کردند تمدن می‌تواند به‌شان عرضه کند و هرگز تصور غم و وهمِ درهم شکسته و فقیر تمدن را نمی‌کردند. آن‌ها نمی‌دانستند که بمبی آمده که می‌تواند همه‌ی پل‌ها و جاده‌های‌مان را از هم بپاشد و تبدیل‌شان کند به آت وآشغال، و ما هم روزی به فقیریِ آن‌ها می‌شویم و همین‌جور، دقیقا همین‌جور دست‌مان را دراز خواهیم کرد

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.

I’ve never had so many mixed feelings about a book....



I have no clue as to how to rate this, so it’s going to sit at 3 stars for now.

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.

I am a firm believer in a checklist for life. This wouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows me, for I am always attempting to enforce order onto chaos. This was my favorite part about college and lawschool; the fact that it broke life into fall semester, Christmas break, spring semester, and summer. It created a marvelous little cycle of struggle and reward.

Life is not necessarily chaotic. However, it is certainly undelineated, uncertain, sprawling, sudden, and unknowable. It is only bounded by birth and death; everything else is guesswork and prophecy. A checklist for life - or if you are fan of crappy Jack Nicholson movies, a "bucket list" - creates a kind of framework in which to live. It provides tangible goals for what sometimes seems an existential struggle for meaning.

Now, I'm sure most people, if asked what they want, would say things like "marriage" or "kids" or "a house with a yard." These are all wonderful aspirations, and far be it from me to disparage any of these. My list is a little different, though. For instance, I would place my desire for "kids" at the same level of scuba diving. (Just kidding, dear!). Furthermore, a lot of my checklist is really specific as to time-and-place. I've run a couple marathons, but what I really want is to do the Midnight Run in Alaska. Also, I'm a lot like Abed from Community in my desire to reenact scenes from my favorite movies (lest you fear, my favorite movie is not Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer).

Why do I mention all this? Well, one reason is I tend to ramble, a lot like your drunk uncle on Thanksgiving. Also, I read this book because it was on my list: read On the Road while backpacking in Europe. A few years ago, on the verge of just such a trip, I decided I needed a copy in my backpack. So, I bought it from the bookstore, dog-eared the pages, spilled some coffee on the cover, and boarded my plane.

On the Road is one of those classics that often end up on a different kind of list: the list of overrated books. It's very generation specific, and perhaps this has something to do with its decline and fall. I didn't have great expectations for it. All I knew was that it was short, famous, and fit into my frame pack. To my happy surprise, I loved it.

The old story, now widely discredited, is that Kerouac wrote the book in one long mescaline binge. In reality, the only thing he was on was coffee. Moreover, as stream-of-conscious as the book feels, it's really the work of a master craftsman. There is a lot of thought put into the sentences, and the fact you can't see the seams is a testament to Kerouac.

Just dig (to use the parlance) the first three lines:

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. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road.

What a start! There's so much information packed into those lines; so much a hint of what's to come. Once I started, I didn't want to stop, which worked out fine, since I had no one to talk to on the night-train from Madrid to Lisbon.

There isn't much to say by way of plot. There's lots of driving, back and forth across this country, in the years following WWII. Don't be mislead by the title; this isn't a single journey so much as a series of digressions. There's boozing and drugs and women, though it's all told in a very chaste manner. There's a vivid image of an America that no longer exists, but is made to feel so real, so immediate, that I felt it might. n  On the Roadn is semiautobiographical, but I don't really care for all the tertiary stuff: the hipster scene and the "beat" generation.

A lot of characters walk on and off stage; the central figure, though, is Dean Moriarty:

He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him.

The writing is incredibly. Despite plot's absence, I was propelled forward. Everyone remembers this gem, the basis for a million inspirational posters:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved. 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.

But there is more great writing where that came from. For all his reputation as a mad man looking for dames and kicks, Kerouac turns out to be a pretty good traveloguer, writing about San Francisco's "potato-patch fog" and a "lilac evening" in Denver. His description of a nighttime ride on the back of a truck, through a sleeping, rural, mid-century America, is one of the most immediate, tactile things I've read. Kerouac made me really nostalgic for a period that disappeared decades before my birth. Reading On the Road was a lot like going to my grandpa's house as a kid. It gave me a soft melancholy I really can't explain.

And yes, it's a good book to stick in your backpack when you set out on your travels and aren't really sure where you're going: "Our battered suitcases were were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."

They're like conquerors without a wilderness to claim, cowboys with no cattle to brand.

So much has been written about Jack Kerouac's On the Road, that I am not really going to write a review. I will pose my thoughts.

I think that for that half-dozen of people who know nothing about On the Road, I will say this. It's Jack Kerouac's most famous novel – Kerouac being the "King of the Beats" and the author who gave impetus to the Beat Generation along with the careers of Allan Ginsburg and William Burroughs. Kerouac's own muse was a sexy, reputedly well-hung man named Neal Cassady. (Kerouac was no slouch either – they made a handsome duo.) Kerouac and Ginsburg met Cassady while they attended Columbia University – Cassady didn't attend - in the late 1940s.

On the Road is a stream-of-conscious accounting of Kerouac's several aimless wanderings with Cassady. It's listed as fiction, but most people agree it's thinly veiled fact. Jack Kerouac wrote on a single long scroll of paper a rambling account of their infidelities, meanderings, drug use, bigamy, drinking, and general lawlessness. It is am interesting novel about post-WWII men lacking a frontier to conquer. It is about ennui, aimlessness, and the destructive ends that seeking adventure and answers can lead you to. It is also about men making their own odyssey, and it has inspired generations of people to take to travel, to trust the kindness of the road without any destination in mind.

In short, it's a self-destructive tome that many people love for its freewheeling spirit, ignoring its self-destructiveness. I am not dismissing the fun Kerouac and Cassady, but I am making sure I also acknowledge their consequences, both of them dying before they reached the age of fifty. Cassady died at 42 from an apparent overdose of Seconal, and Kerouac died at 47 of cirrosis from heavy drinking.

I think the fascination for me is how people let themselves come to 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. It happened with Verlaine and Rimbaud, it happened with Shelley and Byron. But it's also happened with Garland and studio-supplied drugs, Belushi and cocaine, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence and a belt around the neck...

But this reductive, highwire lifestyle also encouraged Kerouac to invent a new way of writing, a voice that captured a new way of looking at the world and redefined a generation. His monologue of adventure across America several times and down into Mexico is hypnotic in its power to bring you along for the ride. It inspired so many others, not the least of which were Hunter S. Thompson and Jim Morrison – self-destructive people in their own right , but also, people who have created some incredible art.

And it all starts with a sexy devil who steals a car and says, "Hey, let's go to San Francisco."

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.

Jack Kerouac goes on a journey to find the real America: In this novel, written in spontaneous prose, his alter ego Sal Paradise walks, hitchhikes, rides trains, cars, and greyhounds, all in pursuit of the American Dream. Aiming for the West and pushing the frontiers of post-WW II society, he is accompanied by his buddy and muse Dean Moriarty (modeled after the infamous Neal Cassady), chasing sex, drugs, bebop and, yes, spiritual enlightenment.

"(...) 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 (...) - those guys didn't give a damn about the mores and morals of 1950's America, they were living it up, and many scenes reflect real events, just as many characters reflect real people (can you spot William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg in the text?).

It's pointless to try and recount the storyline of the book, because it's all about the journey Sal undertakes: The road connects the manifold vignettes that mainly focus on the working class and the counter culture, certainly not the rich and the powerful. Kerouac, a former football player at Columbia, dropped out of college in search of authenticity, skeptical of an elitism that is based on exclusion. So did the Beats get it right? Certainly not in all respects, but hell, they were fearless - and that makes for bold literature. Beat down, upbeat, beatific - they wanted it all, always moving, always burning.

If you want to learn more about Beat literature (plus a little Gonzo), you can listen to our podcast special here (in German).

This may be the most diffucult book to write a review for that I have ever read. On one hand I feel like it will take several pages to describe, and on the other I think where can I find a handful of words to describe how I feel. Twenty seven of my Goodreads friends have read this book and their ratings range from 1 to 5 stars. While reading this my opinion ran through the entire range as well. But somewhere late in the book I realized that I would give it 4 or 5 stars. It's uniqueness demands it, it's boldness demands it. Kerouac's novel gives us a snapshot of a generation, of a segment of American life, of a certain group of people that are depicted nowhere else in literature, as they are in this novel. And what connects Kerouac to the reader so well is knowing that he is not just writing, not just observing, he is participating, he is living this crazy life with these crazy people, because crazy is what they were. But Kerouac captures it perfectly and leaves it for us to read, to feel, and to enjoy or not.

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.