On The Road by Jack Kerouac

Finished reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road on Saturday. I have to go in saying that I fully expected to hate this book. Given all the hype and adulation from the hippy-dippy crowd over the years, I expected something much more, um, how to put this nicely, "drugs-are-freakin'-awesome-dude!" And while there was some of that, it wasn't the whole point of the book, though it was important.

As many folks know, On the Road, is about Kerouac's adventures with several of his other "Beat Generation" friends. All are very scantily veiled under pseudonyms, and apparently it didn't take a genius to figure out which character was which person. William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg are among the luminaries represented in the book. Most prominent however is Neal Cassady in the guise of Dean Moriarty. The book is largely about how Cassady lived and thought in the late 1940s.

Kerouac's novel revolves around four road trips he took in 1947 to some indeterminate time before 1950. Through hitch-hiking, buses, shared cars, friends cars, and if I recall correctly, even a train, Kerouac (Sal Paradise in the book) made his way throughout the U.S.A. He recalls the rides he got, the rides he didn't get, and the blow-out parties he had with his friends in Denver, San Francisco, and elsewhere. Booze, marijuana (and other drugs), easy sex, all set to a jazz soundtrack made up most of the good times in the book. He lived a bohemian lifestyle and largely enjoyed it. He grooved on the free-thinking philosopy, poetry, and writing of his friends. But more than anything, he talks about his adulation for Dean Moriarty (as mentioned, the real-life Neal Cassady). Cassady was, it would appear, a totally free-spirit and Kerouac worshipped him for it. I, on the other hand, would characterize Moriarty-Cassady as a total, complete, and unredeemable douchebag. No other term could express how much of a jerk this guy was. He stole, connived, conned, used, abused, and generally mistreated everyone he ever met. All of this because the man was seemingly completely self-centered and self-absorbed and always in the pursuit of a good time (only under what I would call a phantom pursuit of experiencing the world in a philosophic way). I really and truly wished at times I could reach through the pages of the book and punch him repeatedly in the face. Did I mention repeatedly? Maybe a few good kickings after that.

What was good about the book? Kerouac's style. He supposedly wrote the book in just three weeks (but apparently put a lot of groundwork together beforehand), but the novel doesn't read like it needs editing. It's well-crafted and not at all choppy. It's not a difficult read and more importantly, the book flows like a good road trip should. Movement, ever forward, ever onward. The book did awaken a nostalgia for the good old days of college and my early 20s. Yeah, it sucked to be broke, but we could go and have a blast of a time and not really care what anyone else thought. Especially on a road trip. But, unlike Dean Moriarty, we all have to grow up sometime and catch our good times where we can.

On the Road inspired many other writers and artists. And since the travelogue is one of my favorite genres, I have to give him a lot of credit for this. Perhaps I wasn't inspired by it because I don't have the soul of a bohemian artist. I just wish he would have concentrated less on Moriarty and more on the people he met on the road, like Terry, the Mexican woman he fell in love with while they were riding on a bus together. More vignettes like that (and given the extent of his travels, I'm sure there were many more) and less of the insufferable Moriarty would have moved this book up into the "very good" category for me. As it is, I'd have to just call it OK. I don't even know that I can bring myself to call it good despite the quality of the writing. In closing, did I mention that I hate the character of Dean Moriarty?