The book was as boring as the movie..
On the Road was required reading by my hippie English teacher in HS and I always thought the " beats" were over rated.
Norman Mailer and Wm.S.Burroughs had more edge to their writing-I think it just doesnt hold up over time-when it was first written yeah it made waves,because no one talked about anything
I've never understood why the book has always been seen as such a masterpiece. I love Ginsberg and Burroughs, so I thought I'd like "On the Road", but I found it boring, pretentious and self-indulgent. Kerouac's writing is interesting, but the plot and characters are so bland and (especially in Dean's case) irritating that it was a struggle to get through only 300 pages. There seems to be more meaning in one page of Ginsberg's poetry than this entire book.
The fact that I was born several decades after the book was written may have something to do with my opinion, though. It may just be that the book, as you suggested, "doesn't hold up over time".
I have to agree. I started the book three seperate times before giving up on it. I just could not get through it, kind of made me angry. Decided to give the movie a chance thinking it couldn't be any more boring than the book. I was mistaken.
shareI absolutely hated the book. So much wandering and bouncing around before anything resembling a plot.. or even a point.. makes itself apparent. That said, I can understand why it is as revered as it is as it works as a snapshot of what beat life was like at the time. Regardless, completing the book was an arduous task and ultimately not very rewarding.
I know I'm committing heresy when I say this, but I enjoyed the film quite a bit more. It definitely had its flaws, but the screenplay cut the excess and made the story more accessible by zoning in on the core Dean-Sal story. There are a number of beautiful images and a superb performance from Kristen Stewart were high points.
There are a number of beautiful images and a superb performance from Kristen Stewart were high points.
If you're looking for a traditional novel, this isn't for you.
What Kerouac was doing was creating the Duluoz legend ... he's Sal Paradise in this book, but Jack Duluoz in most of the others.
It was a whole new concept — well, rooted in Proust's picaresque "Remembrances" and Wolfe's picturesque details — but where he saw life as one grand story. So, all the books work together telling one epic interconnected novel, or legend.
And then ... he picked as friends (and character subjects), other people who would go on to be famous — in part because of Jack's portrayal (say in the case of Neal or Huncke or his wives & lovers), or because of their own endeavours (Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti etc.)
So, he has this poetic Whitmanesque prose, that's telling the arc of a life. On The Road is just one part of that arc.
It's a Huck Finn story ... ie; prankstering about on rule-breaking adventures, with the road instead of a river.
And then there's that it's all based on real events -- which can also be read about in say John Clellon Holme's novels, or Allen's poems, or the subsequently published letters and journals.
And that it captures this magic time in America right after the Second World War — this amazing opening of the doors and windows ... fuelled by cars and the new highways and jukeboxes and be-bop jazz ... but mostly a new-found ability to travel around the country for next to free. That whole exuberant wide-open new world of possibility. That's what he's capturing.
It was a world that never existed before ... captured in a style never written before.