On The Road

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Summary: For those that think they are smart, but are not...
Review: I had to read this book for class. It wasn't very good. Kerouac is a crazy and surprising s.o.b. to have pulled off making this into a classic. The writing style for this novel was mediocre at best. This book only remains popular because of the sad existence of the angst-filled pre-teen mindset that seems cling to some people well into their twenties. There was (and is) no plot. It read like a person writing a letter to a friend that recounted his daily life. Or like a Diary. I was very disapointed. (p.s. This response was written in much the same style On the Road was written. Know what you're getting into. If you want to read a little over 300 pages of this type of prose, go ahead and buy the book.)

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Summary: A life changing masterpiece....
Review: Kerouac's On The Road is a classic example of one man doing what everyone else secretly wants to. His trips across the country have inspired many to follow his lead and just live. Although that Kerouac's lifestyle is much more difficult to achieve these days, his book still leaves a huge impact on whomever reads it. A must read for anyone who wants to get the most from life.

Rating:
Summary: A life changing masterpiece....
Review: Kerouac's On The Road is a classic example of one man doing what everyone else secretly wants to. His trips across the country have inspired many to follow his lead and just live. Although that Kaerouac's lifestyle is much more difficult to achieve these days, his book still leaves a huge impact on whoever reads it. A must read for anyone who wants to get the most from life.

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Summary: a heartfelt joyous story about pure freedom
Review: I just finished reading On the Road today and although it took me awhile I think I've fallen in love with it. The views of life that Kerouac expressed are those that I would like to incorporate into my own. Every word of this novel breathes, shouts, screams freedom and takes the reader back to a time in our history when things were simple and true yet so wonderfully amazing. Reading this book inspired me to begin writing some of my own. In fact reading this book inspires me to shout from the rooftops about the joyful spontaneous chaos that is life! Kerouac had such talent -- I marked passages throughout this novel that moved me and enthralled me. This is the kind of life i would love to live -- not held down by anything, free to roam, free to be a person and fully experience life. Kerouac's writing has a wonderful simplicity to it that makes it so sincere. It's fantastically vibrant, passionate, and pure. I cannot wait to read this novel again. It took me to an America that I would have loved to have been a part of, an America that exists now only as history and memories.

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Summary: An eternal travelouge
Review: "On the Road" is more a living and breathing guide than a novel. Do not read this book in bed, wrapped up in blankets--try and live/relive the experiences shared by Sal and Dean. Those who claim that the novel's characters lack initiative and simply search about for that ever-allusive "something to do" miss entirely the thrust of the novel--they are making their own destiny (their own Paradise, if you will)--the beauty of their journey lies exactly in its lack of a set, formulated agenda. The story is organic in the vain of Jack London and Thomas Wolfe and certainly ranks up there with their finest works.

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Summary: a book that makes you want to pack up, catch a ride and GO!!
Review: this book was recommended to me by my teacher...if since reading has been a blast

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Summary: the most meaningful book in the world
Review: when I first read On The Road I was just 16. I knew next to nothing about the world. because of it I decided to take a 2 week road trip to LA with a friend which remains the crowning achievement in my life. His description of rolling America and saintly, sad, desolation angels scattered across the landscape touched my life and opened my eyes to a new horizon of living. Every book I have read by Kerouac I've loved and I remain an avid follower.

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Summary: beautiful, exploratory book but confused and depressing
Review: Jack Kerouac's On the Road was written in three weeks, after seven years of zapping back and forth across America. The passages describing his travels in this book are simply classical. The problem is the main focus of the book is Moriarty (Cassady) who is repeatedly called a con-man and such and behaves in great womanizing fashion- he shacks up with one girl only to try to keep another going at the same time- and there is never any point to all these goings on- we are just frantically confronted with Dean happy, Dean sad, Dean anything. He leaves Sal, his best friend hanging in Mexico in his hour of need-he is going back to get another divorce. Sal says that he is a rat but he forgives him anyway- this just struck me as plain bullshit. No-one would forgive a friend for that. At the end, they leave him as he is ready to cross the continent once more- and Sal takes pity on him. You realise that these people are just plain fucked up, and that's what makes this a great book, but ultimately it is a depressing one. I think you will find that if you look through literature, Shakespeare for example deals with tradgedy without becoming depressing. This is where Kerouac fails- call it self-indulgence, whatever, it is a classic, but a flawed one

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Summary: a kindly rejoinder
Review: Although I need to wash the car, do the dishes and eat dinner one of these days, everything must be put on hold--in fact at the risk of sounding imposing the earth must for 10 minutes cease its incessant spinning so I can respond to shawn mcbride's even more dizzying review of On The Road. What in god's name could trigger such a mean-hearted response to such an unpretentious, sweet and joyous piece of work? Of all the contrived, vacuous and vile literature piled high in every bookstore from sea to shining sea, our friend somehow found it necessary to pan, and with fervor, On The Road???????? This requires more than a simple contrary response: I believe it's necessary to actually enter shawn's head, to do a cranial shawnectomy, to even reach inside his very soul and pluck all the thorns and barbs the poor fellow has received from life (not to mention the book.) My friend, please don't condemn Kerouac for the (late) popularity of his novel or for eventually becoming a cultural icon--such attachments actually have much more to do with our own deficiencies rather than any of his own. If you let such a perspective influence your literary analyses, you've become the very dupe of society I'm sure you believe you're independently and outrageously detached from. May I however gently request shawn, so you next time don't sound so stupid and uninformed, that you do a smidgeon of research on a subject before you attribute blanket statements that reinforce some lazy opinion dangling around your head since junior year of college. Kerouac was far from a rich white boy on financed vacations; he actually was from a blue collar immigrant family; he attended Columbia strictly on a football scholarship, and dropped out long before graduating. He (and the book's protagonist) always had a number of blue collar jobs. If his very aspirations of being a writer was elitist, then I suppose all wielders of a pen are so condemned. How ever could one condemn a book whose characters so artistically and poetically try, often futilely, to discover traces of their own joys in life rather than accept that what is manufactured and packaged for them? Shawn--please write and tell me a book which has delivered to you beauty and honesty--I swear I'll read it tomorrow. I somehow believe such a work doesn't exist for you and that any attempts simply and defenselessly are for one purpose: to be disassembled. May I say this: whenever I'm feeling so bleakly cynical, I need to only randomly find a page in this book. Really, just about any one. I've discovered no artistic achievement that is so life affirming, and exactly so blue. Brother may you have such a balm.

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Summary: 1950s novel precursor to J Crew catalogs
Review: On the Road is the single most overrated bad novel in the twentieth century. I say "overrated bad" because I must distinguish between that category and "overrated good" or "overrated fair;" I wish no disrespect to the latter two. Let's face it: this book's popularity stems from the fact it provides romantic fantasy to priveledged suburbanites who fancy themselves "creative," "book reading," and "rebellious" and who subsequently define rebellion as hopping around the country (who without money could even do this?), drinking jug wine, and shouting impromptu poems to the moon while walking barefoot. Please. Kerouac's prose, for all its supposed "spontanaity," strikes this reader as labored and heavy handed, even when entire pages pass without punctuation. I can almost hear a rusted robot walking when I read his prose: creak, BOOM; creak, BOOM! Kerouac offers absolutely zero insights into ANYTHING. Any supposed attempts to portray the exhilaration of the road, the excitedness of youth, or the opposition to Eisenhower-era conservatism ring completely false. I almost felt bad for the author while reading it, realizing "this guy has zero talent" (well, plus he is dead and all). Which is a shame because that's the only little revelation I gleaned from Kerouac: he really wanted to be a writer. Ed Wood really wanted to be Orson Welles, though. At least Wood's work was funny; Kerouac can't even muster that. This book is proof that anybody can finish a novel so long as they have the tenacity to continue typing random words together for awhile. Based on the glowing recommendations of friends and fellow book lovers, I can't think of a novel I was more disappointed in than this one (and subsequent other bad books by Kerouac). I mean, please trust me that it's hard to write a book about drug taking, sex having, and conservatism opposing that I don't like. And I really disliked this book and its self-referential vapidity. On the Road is almost singlehandedly responsible for the modern proliferation of aspiring authors who pick out "author clothes" like seersucker shorts and plastic cigarette holders before typing one page of a focused manuscript. It's been a terrible influence, and certainly has inspired one too many lead singers in rock bands to submit flotsam and jetsom to book publishers. And THAT, folks, is a CRIME...AGAINST...HUMANITY! Have you ever read any of Bob Dylan's stuff? All that said, however, I highly recommend the book if you are a nineteen-year-old rich male who's really angry at your parents because they told you that they won't fund your three-year, self-finding hiatus from Brown. I think this book is right up your alley. Of course, you could just read your Patagonia magazine; that has pictures!