Rating: 
Summary: Beat Generation Hip
Review: Stream of consciousness indeed. You must really get in touch with the rhythm of the language here or it's tough going. Perhaps my expectations were to high. Found the lives of these characters rather maudlin. They might have been inebriated but their lives were far short of intoxicating.
Rating: 
Summary: Liturature Could Not Get Better
Review: On the Road is a book that people will be reading from genertaions to come. It's a all-time classic and will remain a New York Times bestseller. This book defined a generation of a liturature. I don't think that we'd have the beatles without this book! It's superb and interesting. I loved this book! Read it!
Rating: 
Summary: The book's great but don't take Matt Dillon's word for it...
Review: If you have enjoyed this book and are looking for an audio version for yourself or a gift I would recommend the Recorded Books edition of On The Road performed by Frank Muller (ISBN 0788726005) versus the Harper's read by Matt Dillon (ISBN 0694523607). I have listened to both these and Muller surpasses Dillon's enthusiasm tenfold. I'm afraid Dillon was chosen more for the business idea that a pop icon reading Kerouac equals higher sales rather then adept narration. Dillon's attempt on the masterpiece is so vapid it's hard to fathom listening to hour after hour of it. Muller on the other hand is quite the opposite. He brings the characters to life with narrative ardor. He takes the listener with him on the great Kerouac journey. Muller draws you into the homily with sublime storytelling skill and you find yourself amongst Sal, Dean, and all the others along for the ride. ...
Rating:
Summary: Puh-leaze! Give me a break
Review: This book gets my nomination for the most overrated book in American Literature. It is trite, saccharine and false. The themes and insights it contains are not even good enough to be third rate. Moreover, as a prose stylist, Kerouac was probably fourth rate. In short, I despise this piece of [garbage] and would advise all of its hipster doofus fans to lose the tie-dye clothes and throw away their bongs. Maybe then they will read something good for a change.
Rating:
Summary: the essential message to people: LIGHTEN UP
Review: I read this book right after Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", which is a complete 180 from Kerouac's philosophy- this novel grabs your attention and focuses it in a way to get one to appreciate BEING ALIVE, and the storms, the rages, the happiness, the tragedy, the experiences, all therein...and ultimately, yes, we eventually do need moderation and directions and work, but perhaps there is a time in every person's life when just loving every moment and flowing with the gift of existence and travel and the new and the exciting is all we need. My favorite quotes- "...because I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion." "...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 lie spiders across the stars..."
Rating: 
Summary: Just a primer
Review: The road seems to be the place to go after a break-up with a wife or a girlfriend, to get away from the cushy comforts of hearth and home, to discover oneself and suddenly, in a moment made of dawn breaking over the Midwest, grok the person you are, always were and still could be. Sal Paradise, Kerouac's alter ego and the narrator of 'On the Road' takes off from Paterson, NJ with his reckless and relentless buddy, Dean Moriarity (a.k.a Cody Pomeray, a.k.a. Neal Cassady), who has spent as much time in libraries reading philosophy as he has in reform schools. The novel is a one-thing-after-another chant, as if you were sitting on a stool next to Kerouac supplying him with beers to keep talking. There's not much story or structure, its just what happened next and who they meet up with while cruising the network of interstate highways the Eisenhower Administration financed. It's a shame 'One the Road' is often the only Kerouac readers get to. It's been superseded by the misinformation that surrounds it. The prose, for example, is not the spontaneous rap Kerouac claimed it was---most likely to the detriment of the manuscript. While it is true he handed it in to his editor on a single roll of paper (numerous individual sheets taped together), this was the third or so time Kerouac had rewritten it. While many readers find the writing poetic and lyrical and beautiful and rhythmic, it pales beside his best work. It has the feel, except in certain passages, such as when Sal Paradise sees the mothswarm of heaven, of having been watered down to appease an editor or a marketing department. If you want uncut, unrestrained, unbelievable Kerouac, pick up 'Visions of Cody' or 'Desolation Angels'. And while you're at it, check out Vince Czyz's 'Adrift in a Vanishing City'. You would think Czyz is Kerouac reincarnated except Czyz is somewhat more sophisticated and his narrative is far more subtle than an assorted collection of exploits connected by a system of highways. In any event, 'On the Road' is just a primer, it's not the soul of Beat.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure Americana
Review: This book reads like your favorite album in all of it's edge-of-your-seat, page turning, glory. Follow Kerouac's thinly veiled alter-ego Sal Paradise and crew around the states when the word "beat" merely referred to the action, not the adjective we know today.
Rating:
Summary: Sad...
Review: This is the novel that inspired countless people to become beatniks. And my question is "why?" Okay, I liked Sal Paradise (Kerouac's name for himself in this autobiographical novel). He was a melancholy, thoughtful, talented young man, and he had a purpose in life - he was a writer. And even he didn't rise above petty theft and carjacking when he had the chance. And the others are miles below him - Remi Boncoeur was a kleptomaniac buffoon, Ed Dunkel was a follower with nary an individual thought in his head, Stan was blind to everything for the sake of pleasure. And then, of course, there's Dean Moriarty, an utterly charming and utterly mindless individual. I'll grant you, he could be capable of the noblest and most touching acts, as when he drove across America just to see Sal for three days. But that doesn't change the fact that he also could be capable of the basest acts, as when he abandoned Sal in Mexico, _while Sal was sick_. Or the fact that he abandoned woman after woman, _with his children_, without a single thought for any of them. And all these people - Sal, Carlo Marx, Ed, etc. - thought that this thoughtless dilettante and con-man was some sort of prophetic visionary. I don't buy it; I couldn't bring myself to dislike Dean (it's impossible, seeing as he's never actively malicious; just thoughtless), but I was saddened by the big deal that was made of him, by the way people allowed him to take advantage of them, and most of all by his ownself, totally devoid of any self-awareness whatsoever. Sal and Dean are supposed to be buddies, but I'll be damned if Sal says more than twenty lines to Dean in the whole book. Dean does all the talking and none of the listening. Sad... I'll grant you, there's a certain poetic exuberance that runs throughout this book. This occurs while the characters are driving on the titular road. These scenes are a pleasure to read, and are the only ones that really could lead one to aspire to be like Sal and Dean. But then the characters stop along the road, and the same ugly sadness as before sets in. Paradise steals bread and cheese. Dean betrays another girl. They smoke .... They dig the hipsters - people with no job, no talent, no future but with a lot of complacency and even pride in their lifestyle. Such a hipster invites Dean to go club someone over the head for purposes of robbery. Dean's reaction is, of course, "I dig you, man!" They go to Mexico, but all they do there is party at a whorehouse. No one besides Paradise (and maybe Carlo Marx, though he comes across as a pseudo-intellectual stoner here) aspires to anything higher than "tea," "kicks," and drinking. Is this life "poetry"? What is the meaning? Where is the beauty? Where is the truth? I found none here. It strikes me as only ugly and futile and sad. Judging from some of Kerouac's soliloquies, he thought the same thing. That is why I liked the book in the end.
Rating:
Summary: A classic for those who don't like classics!
Review: At lunch one recent afternoon, my friend and I were discussing books. I don't read a lot of fiction, but asked him if he had any recommendations for a good story. He jumped at the opportunity to tell me about "On The Road". Now, I've heard of the book and even saw a real good documentary on Kerouac and his beat generation friends, but I had never read any of his work. Anyway, by coincidence, my girlfriend bought me the book for my birthday, and I spent the next few days plowing through this incredible piece of storytelling. Reading "On the Road" will take your breath away. At the end of each chapter, I found myself having to take a breath because it was quite obvious that Kerouac didn't take any while writing the book. The story comes off as this incredible ramble of beautiful words and sentences that magicly combine to describe this crazy cross country journey. I heard that Kerouac wrote the entire manuscript on one really long piece of paper and didn't bother adding chapter, page or even paragraph breaks. It was just one big run-on story. The editors cleaned it up quite a lot, but the feeling still comes through. His descriptions of the American landscape are incredible, so incredible that they make you want to quit your job, buy some old jalopy and just go west.
Rating:
Summary: Classic spontaneous prose
Review: Kerouac's 1957 novel, On the Road, is simply one of the best books one can hope to read. I chose this novel to read for an English project at school which was open-ended, and this autobiographical story was a perfect aid to the research I did on Kerouac's life. His "spontaneous prose," the style Kerouac used in most of his writing, in this novel is in it's early stages, but still flows as well as that of any conventional novel. This book is anything BUT conventional, that is true, but it still holds a steadfast place in the classics list among the works of other Beat writers like William S. Burroughs and even Ken Kesey. It is an unintentional analyzation of a time, a generation, and a lifestyle that Kerouac intentionally lived.
|
