On The Road

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring,emotional pilgrimage that has no final destination
Review: Sal (Kerouac) travels across the country chasing his friend (Dean, Neal Cassidy) and enlightenment. Sal wants to experience life, to see America in all it's beat glory. And through this book I went to New York to California to New Orleans to Mexico and loved it--I want to hit the road again.

Rating:
Summary: Why is this a great book?
Review: I do not think this is a very good novel. I do think, though, that this is a great poem, perhaps, the greatest. I don't believe that I have ever read something so musical. This book plays out like a jazz concert. It is both frantic and calming, angry and kind. If you read this don't approach it as your standard American novel. Read this in the way that you would listen to your favortie album and I guarantee that you will come away happy.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant piece of Work--The Best Book EVER!
Review: This is such a weird book, and I'm glad Kerouac and Cassady and Ginsberg and all those other gay people did all that on the road stuff. It's hilarious to see how they screwed their lives up. A great work of art. Ha ha.

Rating:
Summary: An American Classic
Review: On The Road is a must for anyone who wants to understand what the Beat generation was all about. Kerouac's writing style of "spontaneous prose" gives On The Road a frenetic pace that is as exhilarating as it is exhaustive. Kerouac skillfully taps into the restless wanderer that exists in most of us.

Rating:
Summary: Readable piece of trash
Review: Just as modern art is a collection of talentless folk, the "Beat Generation" (Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg etc.) is largely void of any literary talent. "On the Road" is an important book, however. It opened the door to the literary and artsy world to the mediocre, weird and foolish. What Warhol did for the art world, Kerouac did for the literary world. Peck at your typewriter, type anything that comes into your head and ignore trite things like plot, character development and transcendent thought. Why is there so little serious fiction today? Read this book, remember how profound it was regarded by the intelligensia and you will realize how far serious fiction has dropped- from Hemingway, Faulkner, Cather and Steinbeck to Kerouac and Ginsberg to Tom Clancy and John Grisham and Deepack Chopak.

Rating:
Summary: This is the best book I have ever read.
Review: This book is so profound and unbelievably well written I was awestruck the first time I read it. The sentences and thoughts are so lyrically molded to a blend of graceful beauty. I was so inspired after reading this book I immediately went out and bought a copy because I wanted it in my library.

Rating:
Summary: Densely charged prose sail across a panorama of 50's America
Review: Electric jazz rhythms pulse through this fluid collection of staccato neon images and wildman impressions in this ultimately crazy sad account of Jack Keaoac's and Neil Cassidy's coast to coast ramblings along the asphalt thread of fifties America. One of the major literary achievements of the twentieth century whose influence on the sixties counterculture cannot be underestimated. The densely charged prose of this book sails swiftly across a panorama of post war American buddas, lunatics, and wastrels, exalting life but at the same time foreboding.

Rating:
Summary: Not the Best I've Read
Review: I will say that "On the Road" was a good book, but diffenently not the best of this period. I found Sal and Dean to be extremely lost and pathetic. I was sick and tired with all this travelling they did and living off of others. Where ever they travelled they weren't happy. So what was the use? I say they needed to get some jobs.

Rating:
Summary: Sal Paradise and Dean?
Review: I put my rating as a 1 only to get some attension. Most people say the same thing about this wonderful novel so, I want people to hear about what Sal and Dean represent. They are the people that we struggle to be, and they live their lives with the passion we all strive for. They're what people have to learn to be like and accept. Life "on the road" is a choice and sometimes we must substitute that road for our own passing. In the end we don't want to be left looking back from a rear view mirror, watching our best friends walking away, alone. Sal's lesson on "the only people for me are the mad ones..." transpires through the search which I too have been desperately awaiting. If Kerouac was still alive today, I would hope that he would be somewhere in Denver looking for ("Dean") Neal Cassidy, and sipping the best wiskey from the back of an old Ford.

Rating:
Summary: The Best and most Exhilerating Book I've read
Review: To say this is the best book I've ever read might not mean much, considering the fact that I'm only 16 and there are hundreds of other superb books out there which I hope to read someday. Nevertheless, I can't help but give this novel my most enthusiastic support. I've read it twice already, and it has pointed the way towards other Beat works like Naked Lunch, Howl, and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, as well as several other Kerouac novels, all of which I have enjoyed immensely. At the same time, I was disgusted that I was the ONLY person in my accelerated english class to have even HEARD of the book. At my age especially, when we're inundated by Dickens and Shakespeare (all wonderful, yet sometimes monotonous, pieces of literature), its nice to know that there are novels out there written in a more casual style, a style that we can relate to. I know people who, God forbid, actually read for recreation now that they know books like On the Road exist. On the Road is a wonderful, brilliant book which, unfortunately, isn't used in any high school I've ever heard of. And, contrary to what Mr. Capote may think, it is certainly not just "typing."