39. On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) 281 p.
On The Road is yet another of those timeless classics that I’ve been forcing myself to read, slowly crossing them off the printed list from TIME magazine that I have blu-tacked to my bookshelf. I’m reading the ones that look at least somewhat interesting first, and On The Road isn’t exactly boring – just repetitive. It’s a fairly aimless ramble about Kerouac’s alter-ego Sal Paradise wandering around the roads of America with his hero Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady), looking for work, women, friends, fun and spiritual revelation. This is interesting for the first fifty or a hundred pages but rapidly wears out its welcome.
The ultimate vibe I got from this novel is that it’s a watered-down version of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. They’re both watershed counter-cultural novels narrated by the author’s alter-egos, but Fear And Loathing is just better in every way. It’s shorter, more tightly edited, louder, more exciting, and less prone to philosophical rambling. Kerouac will not shut the fuck up about all the meandering mystic bullshit him and Neal Cassady talked about on their beatnik roadtrips, and I just didn’t care. In a way it’s appropriate, because I’m sure the counter-culture revolution of the 60’s was crazier and more exhilarating than that of the 40’s. Am I myself rambling? Is it fair to say that a novel written 20 years later was better than this one? I don’t know or care, because it’s well past midnight and I have work at eight and I just spent two hours straight pushing through the last 90 pages of this book because I wanted it finished. Always a good sign!
Books: 39/50
Pages: 11, 961
4 comments
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September 19, 2008 at 12:47 am
sobnyc
great blog, please visit mine, I think you would enjoy some of the life stories from a book I put together called “Corners”
-peace
http://www.sobnyc.wordpress.com
September 19, 2008 at 3:24 pm
sunrise089
Funny….your review of this one is about the opposite of my experience with “The Road” (The Cormac McCarthy one, not this one). I read it after your strong recommendation, and felt it was monotonous and dull for the first 50 pages. It certainly got better and better as it went on though.
September 21, 2008 at 2:02 am
grubstreethack
I felt The Road could have been compressed to a novel about 100 pages shorter. It’s definitely stronger towards the end, though, especially when they arrive at the ocean.
February 17, 2010 at 1:24 am
Book Review: American Journeys « Grub Street
[…] a very respectable chunk of the country, crossing back and forth almost as much as Jack Kerouac in On The Road. There are several recurring themes – race relations, the plight of America’s […]