So I read it, and…I cannot – for the life of me – figure out what the big attraction was/is. I’m pushing 50 myself, so I should be able to relate in SOME way to this snore-fest of a book. My generation revels in this stuff, yet I simply cannot connect. And I was a wanderer and a wild one myself in my younger years . In Colorado, even. But I just don’t get this book…
You know, I don’t think anybody ever really read it. It’s the hippie equivalent of a coffee table book…or in this case a bongwater book. It’s there because it made you look cool to have it, like lavalamps and glow in the dark psychedilc posters.
I’m pushing 50, too, and I’ve tried reading it since I was a teen. It is an endless (because I keep falling asleep) snorefest with absolutely nothing going for it: pointless, interestless, and poorly written, it is about pointless and interestless people. Maybe they were more interesting in real life (or maybe if you took enough drugs they were) but either they were pompous dullards or Kerouac made them look that way. I’m leaning towards them being pompous dullards.
I did read it in college after one of my friends kept telling me to. “It’ll make you want to travel.”
Not really. I mean, I love travelling but not like that.
I think Kerouac was a good writer, though. His prose was engaging, but the characters were generally unlikable and, maybe because of when I was reading it (the mid-'80s at age 23) or not, I just thought they were uncaring, irresponsible and conceited people whom I wouldn’t want to emulate.
I read it a few years ago (I think I was 25) and had much the same reaction as Photopat. It’s a story about people driving around getting drunk and stoned. What bothered me most about the book was that they didn’t do the things that I think are important when you travel.
I love to travel, and I do it every chance I get. I think that the most rewarding part of traveling is seeing a new place, meeting new people, and being exposed to something that you haven’t experienced before. You might attend a church service of a different faith, participate in a village celebration, visit an indigenous market, talk to a family that lives a completely different life than you, and the experience can be amazing. While I was reading the book, I just kept feeling like they were wasting what should have been an incredible experience.
I didn’t “get it” either, though I admit I went into it with prejudice. I’d read Timothy Leary’s autobiographies and other writings ABOUT Kerouac before I went into it and came away with the notion of what a selfish and insensitive (to others) jerk he was (plus the fact that he rarely provided any emotional or financial support for his child) that I didn’t greatly care what he had to say on how to live one’s life. (If he’d been writing novels about Byzantine emperors or something less autobiographical it’d have been different and I could overlook his shortcomings, but as it was I didn’t want to be like him or any of his friends and my “get a job, hippie!” genes kicked in [much as they did when I saw the musical RENT].)
The whole purpose of reading someone else’s book is to experience that person’s reality. Of course Kerouac didn’t go sight seeing. And the mores imposed in today’s politically correct society are exactly those things he was on the road “from”.
I have the book read by Kerouac. I kept it in my car for months. It was great transportation listening.
Look out. Kesey’s memorial bus ride may be coming to a community near you. Further.
I read it as a teenager (early 70s) and I remember liking it. I re-read it a few years ago, and found it kind of boring. I kept waiting for them to actually do something. But I did like the 50s beat/jazz slang. Dig it, man!
Boring? Wow, that stings. “On the Road” is one of my favorite books of all time. I’m 26 and read it for the first time in college. I bawled like a baby at the end, though I probably had no reason to, and am probably the first and only person to have done so. There’s just something about it. To me, it’s magical. Maybe that just makes me the freaky English major. Sorry to hear you don’t like it!
I understand that it’s the journey, not the destination, and blah, blah, blah, but I just didn’t see any of his travels to be particularly interesting. I don’t even expect him to do sightseeing. I just thought he was kind of boring. I’m all for a big vacation bender, but none of it seemed journal-worthy. I guess I should take another look at it…I love the Kesey/Further stuff. Although I never read any in its entirety, it’s infinitely more interesting. Sigh…I hate when I don’t get something that’s supposed to be such an integral part of our modern literary fiber.
Can I join the club for Don’t Getters? I literally (literarily?) cannot get into this book. A couple chapters in they all take a long, dusty ride in the back of a truck and zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Sorry. Really, I am. I know Keroauc is supposed to be one of the greatest writers from a really important time in America. But, like I said, zzzzzzzz. Sorry. Some things are actually so boring that they can hurt, and for me On The Road is one of those things. Should I say sorry again? No. Okay, then, I won’t.
I read it in high school (late 80’s/early 90’s) and hated it - I remember describing it to a friend as “a bunch of people who drive around and eat apple pie with cheese on it. Cheese on pie, for chrissakes!” (I’d never heard of cheese on pie until then. I remembr this because one of the nuns heard my “chrissakes” comment and was, er, not happy with me).
Then I had to read it again in college for a class and I really enjoyed it. I don’t remember why though. It may have been the context of the class I was reading it for (high school was generic class, college was a class on the fifties).
I keep meaning to re-read it, but it just hasn’t happened yet.
I read it as a teenager in the mid-90s, and it did nothing for me. I found Kerouac and his buddies utterly unsympathetic. I can appreciate why it was a big deal when it was written, but it bored the pants off me. (I had much the same reaction to the film Easy Rider.)
Maybe you have to be pushing 60 to get it?
I read it 4-5 years ago; I was in my 30s. I thought Dean Moriarty was a self-medicating mental case, which is why he did all that crazy shit. I have trouble liking a character who steals from friends, uses women, and fathers children and abondons them. “I have to get my kicks! The world OWES me cars, alcohol, food, sex, and drugs!” On the other hand, it would have been cool to see some of those great jazz and blues musicians in small clubs early in their careers.
I liked On the Road, which I read a couple of times around 1989-90, when I was in my early 20s. But unlike many people my age, I’m a jazz nut, so my enjoyment of the novel may have little to do with the narrative and more to do with (a) Kerouac’s attempt to write like a jazz musician, i.e. improvising in the moment (admittedly his success at this is uneven), and (b) the portrayal of a time in which the difference between Dexter Gordon and Duke Ellington meant something.
Ahem: No, pushing 60 won’t do it for you either. I am a child of the '50s. I first read On The Road in 1960, at age 17. Disappointed because I had been assured the book was “cool” and found it boring, I proceeded to read Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. Same result, boring.
Hell, the things I was doing myself were more interesting and fun than what his books described. All these years later I can remember only one cool thing he wrote. It was that passage about being nearly out of gas on the mountain top, and turning the car’s engine off, putting it into neutral, and coasting 26 miles downhill. That was cool. To me, the rest was just dull.
I read On the Road for the first time when I was sixteen or seventeen. I didn’t think there was anything to “get.” It’s the story of some peoples’ lives, and peoples’ lives don’t tend to have points. I appreciated the prose, such as when he describes the Mexican police officer as the guardian of the sleeping town, and Ed Dunkel’s shadow in the photo.
Dean became more and more annoying each time I read it. It’s probably a sign of my age in that rejecting the nine-to-five world of steady employment, casual sex and drug use don’t seem like any big whoop but I was absolutely appalled that Dean hit his girlfriend, and could mention it casually in a conversation.
The Dharma Bums is one of my all-time favorite books. I became interested in Buddhism after reading it, so it’s been an interesting loop. Having learned more about Buddhism, I can appreciate the book more, such the significance of Ray pointing out he’s a Mayahanist and Japhy’s a Zen Buddhist.
. In Colorado, even. But I just don’t get this book…