in september, this book will turn sixty years old! while i do not care for it personally, and the celebration of a couple of self-satisfied pseudo-intellectual doofuses and their buffet-style spirituality traveling across the country, leaving a number of pregnancies in their wake and exploiting underage mexican prostitutes makes me wonder why this book endures, endure it does. so i have made a road trip booklist with less ickiness and more cannibalism. enjoy!

https://www.rifflebooks.com/list/237494

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…

This is probably the worst book I have ever finished, and I'm forever indebted to the deeply personality-disordered college professor who assigned it, because if it hadn't been for that class I never would've gotten through, and I gotta tell you, this is the book I love to hate.

I deeply cherish but don't know that I fully agree with Truman Capote's assessment: that _On the Road_ "is not writing at all -- it's typing."

Lovely, Turman, but let's be clear: typing by itself is fairly innocuous -- this book is so awful it's actually offensive, and even incredibly damaging.

I'd be lying if I said there aren't parts of this book that're so bad they're good -- good as in morbidly fascinating, in the manner of advanced-stage syphilis slides from seventh-grade health class. Keroac's ode to the sad-eyed Negro is actually an incredible, incredible example of.... something I'm glad has been typed. For the record. So we can all see it clearly, and KNOW.

Please don't get me wrong! My disproportionately massive loathing for Jack Kerouac has zero to do with his unenlightened racial views. I mean, it was written in the fifties, and anyway, it's great that he was able to articulate these ideas so honestly. No, the real reason I hate this book so much is that it established a deeply retarded model of European-American male coolness that continues to plague our culture today.

I could go into a lot more depth on this topic, but it's come to my attention that I've been using my horrible addiction to Bookster to avoid the many obligations and responsiblities of my daily life, to which I should now return. So, in closing: this book SUCKS. This book is UNBELIEVABLY TERRIBLE. And for that very reason, especially considering its serious and detrimental impact on western civilization, I definitely recommend that you read it, if you have not suffered that grave misfortune already.

“Non facevamo altro che girare da una parte all’altra con gli amici e ubriacarci”

Per me 311 pagine di libro si possono riassumere con queste 2 righe che ho letto a pagina 270.

Una banda di cialtroni, alcolizzati e nullafacenti che vagano da una parte all’altra del paese, fino a quando non finiscono i soldi, quindi o si mettono a lavorare provvisoriamente, in attesa di ripartire oppure scomodano la famigerata “zia d’America” che immancabilmente ci mette una pezza.

Forse vi starete chiedendo perché non ho abbandonato.
La risposta è semplice amici: sono deficiente.

n  EDIT: 26/03/2018n
I just learnt that Sam and Dean from Supernatural were named after Sal and Dean, and I don't know what to believe in anymore.

--

n  ORIGINAL REVIEW:n

ALTERNATE TITLE: White People Problems
ALTERNATE ALTERNATE TITLE: How Many Girls is Too Many Girls?
ALTERNATE ALTERNATE ALTERNATE TITLE: Do I Sound Smart Yet?

Why is this a beloved book? I read it for the second time because I thought I was too young to have understood it when I read it the first time. It turns out the book is still not good, and Jack Kerouac is still an asshole. For the past three days, I've been opening this edit box and closing it. Because honestly, I couldn't bear the thought of going through my notes, my notes filled with Kerouac's insipid, yet simultaneously aggravating thoughts. I mean, I did read this twice! Two whole times. That's a lot of hours I'll never get back. Nevertheless, I stopped procrastinating, and decided that like ripping a band aid, it's best I get done with this as quickly as possible. Because after this, I'm never touching this book again. Fuck this book.

There are books that I dislike because of the language. There are books that I dislike because they're too cheesy. There's books that I think are too good or too bad to be true and so I dislike them too. Then there are books like this that I dislike, because seriously, what the fuck was the writer thinking? It reads like nothing more than an ode to his superior intelligence, his friends' superior intelligence, and their collective "intellectual and sexual prowess". Fuck this book.

I really don't like stereotypes. I try consciously to not stereotype. But this book could only and only have been written by a White, heterosexual male. Actually, make that American, White, heterosexual male. I mean, anyone who says that the millennial generation is self-obsessed should be asked to read this book. Never have I read a book so complacent, so self-centered. Honestly, no one thinks Sal (Jack) and his friends are the pinnacle of intellectual evolution more than Sal and his friends. What makes it worse is Sal's constant undermining of his own intelligence, which very plainly looks like he's trying to talk about how smart he is without sounding like an idiot. Emphasis on "trying", because by god, does he fail miserably at it. Fuck this book.

It could've been funny, maybe even a little charming. But Kerouac all spends his time trying to build up this aura of intellect, only for it collapse on itself inelegantly. How anyone could idolise Dean Moriarty is beyond me. He is nothing more than a self-serving egomaniac (and nymphomaniac) who would probably pimp out his mother for a bottle of whiskey and a pack of Parliaments. The problem is, I've actually met people who're as bad, and the end result is nowhere as literarily perfect as it is in this book. Fuck this book.

Don't even get me started on the portrayal of the female characters in this book. Because there is no "portrayal", really. Despite his claims of having been with more women than I can count on my fingers, Sal's understanding of women is painfully pedestrian. On reading the description of the women in this book, I can only conclude that these characters were written by an alien ghostwriter who had a very vague idea of what women actually were. They are reduced to caricatures of what someone else must have described as "women". They're either whores or prudes. Easy or difficult. Hot or fat. In Sal, and in fact, his friends' eyes, women exist to satisfy their sexual needs. Worse still, women are okay with being reduced to mere sexual objects. Never have I seen a man so tone-deaf about what women are since Henry VIII created a new religion to satisfy his sexual appetite. Fuck this book.

I say in many books that it is me, and not the book. Here, it is the book. The combination of smug intellectual superiority, and utter and total disregard for anyone who isn't white, heterosexual, or male makes this book truly one of the worst I've read. There is the unnecessary glorification of criminal acts, of ruffians, of drugs, of addiction, of sex; gratuitous idolisation of people one really shouldn't be idolsing. Kerouac perhaps pulled off perhaps the world's greatest literary scam in getting this book published. It isn't great in any way. I don't even think it is truly representative of Beat Culture. Kerouac should've just stuck to naming the Beat Generation and left the writing to his friends. That is truly a better contribution to literature than this awful book. Considering this book a Great American Novel would be trivialising the contribution of America to the world of literature. FUCK. THIS. BOOK.

This was an interesting description of a lifestyle but it was not a story. Because I live in Denver, the book has many aspects that hit close to home and I still could not care less.

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

I don't wish to be hyperbolic, but Jack Kerouac may be (unwittingly) responsible for the national standard "The Ugly American." Believe me, I SO want to drink in the carpe diem, exploratory life-lust, but his rampant, self-indulgent Id-fest left many women, friends, and strangers in its wounded wake. His women are two-dimensional, holy-whore fan-bots; his friends are so much hog twaddle compared to his idol Dean; and his pursuit of adventure required much theft to fund it (even though he was a college grad and published writer who could have saved a buck to pay for it). I'm reminded of Louisa May Alcott's "Transcendental Wild Oats," in which the men lounged by the fire smoking pipes and waxing philosophic, while the women washed the clothes, cooked the food, and tended the crops. My modern mind looks at sleeping with 15-year-old Mexican prostitutes as morally questionable; my soccer-mom mentality sees knocking up women across the nation and leaving them to raise the chillen as "trashy"; my Hilary sensibility says, "stealing cars is wrong!" And yet... His magical, stream-of-consciousness description of America's many regions is transformative; his love of jazz, mad friends, and life is admirable; his optimism is so young and vital! And who on this planet would say Des Moines has the most beautiful women?! I want to read the original scroll (to be published this September) to see if it is populated with LESS of Dean "Wow!"s and "Yes!"ses, and MORE of the immediacy of life impressions (by the deletion of commas, religious references, and pseudonyms). I give this book a "3" because it was egocentric; I give it a "3" because it touched me.

I understand it was wildly popular and influential … but I just never drank the koolaid.

I've never read a more taxing classic in my life. The premise of this book was interesting enough since I love any book with a road trip involved however, when I got into this book, I felt like tearing my hair out.

On The Road basically follows a privileged white, middle class male who goes on a trip across America and Mexico following a mentally disturbed individual named Dean Moriarty just because he has nothing better to do and wants to find "it," an elusive way of life that only the Beat Generation could fathom at the time. The narrative is written in this mixture of stream of conscious meets jazz meets utter bullcrap, which makes it extremely hard to read and even harder to want to pick up again if you put it down. I don't want to harp too hard on this book, but I sincerely disliked it. Truthfully, this is the first time I've ever found myself patiently hoping that one of the main characters (ahem....Dean) dies in the end of the book.

I'm glad I finished this book since I now feel accomplished, but I do wish I could get the hours spent reading it back. I would not recommend this book and don't have the faintest idea as to why anyone would see this as a worthwhile classic. All I can say is good riddance and good day to this book. I will gladly turn it back into the library and never bother reading it again since even listening to the audiobook didn't help make the book palatable.

There is a apparent cult-following to On The Road which I believe consists primarily of college undergraduates, yearning for freedoms and ignorant of responsibilities, in fact ignorant still of their own human horrible-ness and vices, to which they bow before and in fact place on a pedestal as virtues: their egoism, their love of life, their uninformed feelings of uniqueness, and their likewise uniformed feelings of latent genius. These qualities are unbounded in the pages of On The Road, everywhere is something humanely horrible: selfishness, unconcern for others, privilege, lack of regard for the future, or rather fear of it. The story (if such a roving and episodic hodgepodge can be called such) follows the narrator, Sal Paradise, across and back the country twice or thrice over, either by himself or accompanied by the assorted members of his "mad" and "beat" entourage: Dean, Mary-lou, and some others (since no character in this novel has any depth of character, no defining characteristics, they are all interchangeable if not completely ignorable). It is a book wherein nothing happens, no one matters. It is the fawning portrait of Dean Moriarty and his laissez les bons temps rouler attidude (in which the good times of Dean often steamroll over the peace and happiness of everyone else). It is a paean of selfishness and self-indulgence, and unbridled privilege. There is something disturbing about the apotheosis of a homeless life by otherwise well-to-do white Americans - it is like Marie Antoinette commissioning for herself a little peasant village wherein she can pretend the role of servant. And that is the sojourn of On The Road: a disparate group of privileged white young people pretending the roles of the homeless and rootless, before returning to their gilded Versailles of American middle-class privilege; pretending the revolutionary before returning to the kingdom of convention (wives, houses, salaries).

While at times florally and ornately written, the book's content is appallingly paltry and self-aggrandizing. For a book so ostensibly the epithalalium of freedom and experience, what one actually discovers is the cloying ethers of vanity and voyeurism. The journey on the road is not a journey of self-discovery, but rather of losing oneself, of escaping. And the means to those ends are the cultural appropriations of vagabonds and Mexicans: which are likewise generalized and idealized for their candid primacy of instant-gratification (if not to say disgusting disregard for others), and recklessness. For Sal and many of the other peripheral sock-puppets which fill out the cast of On The Road, "life on the road" (a phrase repeated ad nauseum) is a vacation from ethical and personal responsibility: a place between: a moral limbo, where sin and suffering are concepts disavowed and put on-hold. It does not promote a culture of sexual freedom, but rather two separate cultures whose balance rely on a double standard: the home and the road, the law and the road, the future and the road.

And yet, there is no fulfillment in this paradisal limbo. It is a world which banishes consequences, but therefore cheapens rewards. Rather than championing experience, it depreciates it. Rather than gratifying their desires, it feeds the voids and requires of them more and more to sate their supposed and misguided desires. Dean, so often appraised as a saint, is neither that, nor truly a devil (he lacks the cleverness and intent to be credited even a fallen angel), he is simply the concretion of moral greyness, of disregard; not of good intent or bad intent, but of no intent at all. He is the incarnation of the Catholic view of original sin: he is born awful, it is his natural state, the unavoidable zero of humanity. The philosophy of this book is the philosophy of human horribleness, of human baseness, as the natural and unbridled state of humanity. It promotes the idea that ambition, goodness, generosity, fidelity, are not only unnatural to us, but that they are vices which keep us from the true virtue of our own destruction and the likewise destruction of the horrible company we keep.

ده ستاره می‌دم!

درمورد این کتاب سخت می‌تونم بنویسم. انقدر که چیزهای جالبی برای من داشت. متن روونی داشت، اتفاقات هیجان‌انگیز و تجربه‌نشده بودن، ریتم بالایی داشت، وقتی می‌خوندی حس می‌کردی که داری می‌دویی باهاشون. توصیفات محشری داشت که می‌تونستی جاده‌های آمریکا و جزکلاب‌ها و مهمونیا و بیابونا و مکزیک و جنگل‌هاش رو باهاش تجربه کنی. من این رو خیلی آروم خوندم. هر از گاهی کمی ازش رو می‌خوندم و این خیلی لذت‌بخش بود.
عیش مدام!

توصیه می‌کنم، به همه، که بخوننش و چه بهتر که حین خوندنش درموردش تحقیق هم بکنن. مثلن وقتی از ترانه‌ای نام می‌برد، دانلودش می کردم و حین خوندن اون صفحات گوش می‌دادمش. یا نقشه آمریکا رو نگاه می‌کردم و مسیر حرکت‌شون رو بررسی می‌کردم. کلی اسم و چیز جالب می‌شه توی این کتاب پیدا کرد و در نهایت شما رو عاشق سفر و تجربه می‌کنه.

باید رفت سفر. باید دید و باید مثل جرقه‌های طلایی‌رنگ این کتاب دوید و دوید تا از نفس افتاد!