On The Road

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Summary: Why I Breathe Air
Review: You can't explain it. You can't call it paradise because that degrades it. You can't call it heaven because it may not exist. To call it the greatest book ever written, the reformer of my soul, and the one pure and beautiful grasping chasm I have ever known is not enough. IT'S HUMANITY. That's all

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Summary: A twentieth century American Classic
Review: When I first read this book 25 years ago it had a tremendous impact on my life . I sougtht to emulate Jack's adventures and found my own road. Looking back from the vantage point of middle age, having had the opportunity to have read countless books, I can truly say that none came close to being as influential as On The Road. His work influenced the generations that followed, yet barely knew him. In the context of his time, Jack's work was a fresh look at the American Spirit. It serves us today as reminder of that Spirit, of that America which is out there beyond what we see on TV or Cyberspace

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Summary: intense, passionate, daring... need I say more?
Review: When was the last time that you heard someone make it all the way across the country on a mere $15? Kerouac's book "On The Road" captures the essence of being a free spirit. Sal Paradise, the main character is carefree and basically goes where the wind takes him. It's a tale of a man who didn't need to have a steady job to feel that life was worthwhile, a feeling most of us today only hope to attain, however unrealistic it may be nowadays. It tells of his mishaps and happenings that take place while he's hitchhiking with all different types of people. This book simply makes you want to get up and go

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Summary: A Highway Trough My Mind!
Review: I first read "On the Road" on a boat sailing down the Amazon River, and my God, it blew me away! It ignited fireworks in my mind and my lifelong dream of one day travelling across the US was reinforced and enlarged. This beautiful book was a highway trough my mind, a firework of dreams and poetry. I was there with Sal and Dean on the road sharing their lives, and for a fragment of eternity I was part of the book - I didn't sense anything around me. It was beautiful and I can only recommend this book - this box of beautiful dreams and lunacy - to anyone with the smallest wish to experience the open road. This could be your ticket to a better life

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Summary: I have nothing to offer except my own confusion....
Review: Holy shit. This is it. My god, buy this book, lock yourself in your bedroom, wrap yourself in about a million blankets and surrender to the the breathtakingly poetic and almost romantic prose of Kerouac's journey across the land. Drink ever word. Savor every verse and taste every image that the writer (isn't there a more worthy word to describe him?) has so vividly painted for you and you'll never be the same again.....

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Summary: Equality, Optimism, and Reality
Review: Most people have not had the experience of traveling across the country by car. Many have not been across the country at all. In the book On The Road, author Jack Kerouac takes the reader on a nationwide voyage with his narrator, Sal Paradise. Sal leaves his hometown of New York in 1947 with the plan to hitchhike to San Francisco. The entire book takes place during these trips, and Kerouac gives lengthy and unique descriptions of each place and person met on them. I was swept up into the adventures portrayed in each city and scene. The book gave me a new and intimate look into the lives of all classes of people. The characters who are engaged in thes adventures view all aspects of life optimistically yet in complete truth and practicality. Jack Kerouac realistically describes the common life of diverse cities, cultures, and people and gives the reader a magical perspective on his or her own life. The narrator of this book, Sal Paradise, is a man whose accounts during his adventure are given with equality and admiration for all things in life. He explains and gives details about different groups located every place he meets. These passages give readers truthful and accurate yet intimate experiences with cultures they may have never been exposed to. Here is a vivid example of his description: "We stopped along the road for a bite to eat. The cowboy went off to have a spare tire patched, and Eddie and I sat down in a kind of homemade diner. I heard a great laugh, the greatest laugh in the world, and here came this rawhide oldtimer Nebraska farmer with a bunch of other boys into the diner. Everybody else laughed with him. He didn't have a care in the world and had the hugest regard for everybody. I said to myself, Wham, listen to that man laugh. He came booming into the diner, calling Maw's name, and she made the sweetest cherry pie in Nebraska, and I had some with a mountainous scoop of ice cream on top."

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Summary: Mad Beat(atific) dash across Post WWII America !
Review: The book Truman Capote called typewritten, not written, chronicles the Beat Generation's coming of age in America. Links in here to all the famous Beat writers. Also see John Clellon Holmes' lesser known version, Go: A Novel .

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Summary: Abandon all you know about modern life and live on impulse
Review: Kerouac makes me want to quit school and just travel this wonderful country of ours, taking everthing in and enjoying every second, no matter how unproductive you are. This book will change your view of life as we know it. Read all of his books if you can, he writes with the loose rhythm of life.

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Summary: Kung-fu meets the Inferno!
Review: Ok, so Dean Moriarty, Kerouac's guide "on the road", isn't exactly Virgil, but On the Road sets Kerouac up as the American Dante, navigating the underbelly of America on his way to purgatory (SEE THE DHARMA BUMS)... So imagine this -- a guided tour of hell, narrated in the voice of the Beats, in the poetry of Dante! Carradine makes it come alive in a way only Kerouac or Ginsberg (the dudes who really lived it man!) could ever imagine! Can you think of a better tune to bust on your way through rush hour traffic? Get the tape!

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Summary: My adolescent bible, Kerouac my adolescent deity.
Review: Where to start with an author and book I have so much admiration for? Truman Capote called there writing merely "typing." A traversty! It is a reaction to Kerouac's "kickwriting." However, the story for me meant an allegory of discovery. A wonderous journey. Essentialy, I view the "beat" generation as highly religous - a revolution based on jazz and Buddhism. The story spoke to a whole generation like "Hemingway's A Sun Also Rises." Thus, for their historical significance are worth reading alone. But it is not hyperbole to say, "it spoke volumes for me." I urge you to read it. Kerouac has a sonorous inner voice. A voice with diction and passion manifested in "Sal Paradise." A narrator whom for me was far more moving that F. Sct Fitz's "Nick Carroway" of the Great Gatsby. An important book for "my generation" too. There is nothing like it. It captures the essence of "jazz" and the souls of many beat writers : Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady. Neal Cassady is the protagonist and is presented as one of the "Greatest American Heroes of the West" in Dean Moriarty. So, read read read. My words cannot paraphrase a book. This is not a whim, I am talking about a book I truly love. Hence, I may rant, I may rave. But please, the ostensible message, is simple and clear : READ. I will not preach. In the words of William S., "Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages." I quote (yet again), symptomatic of modern times? "On the Road had above all the extraordinary fortune of finding itself, for an immense number of people, much less a book than a state of vision, a feeling of conciousness, Kerouac's novel offers the chance to go on the road with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, two great American 'courage-teachers' - perhaps the last of their tribe. Read, and thankyou. I am honestly impassioned, share my madness. Thankyou for listening. It is sympotmatic that every person of "my generation" - I am under - HAS NOT READ THIS!