Going Down The Road In This Too Big World

“I hope you get where you’re going and be happy when you do.”

—Jack Kerouac, On the Road

The excesses of the holidays and a nasty cold have delayed my next blog entry reviewing one of my favorite books of all time, “On the Road” (1957) by Jack Kerouac. This novel eschews a traditional plot and rather documents three trips back and forth from the east and west coasts by Kerouac from the years 1947-1950 and his adventures along the way. And what adventures they were! Kerouac (as Sal Paradise) encounters other Beat Generation legends such as Allen Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs, gets drunk, takes drugs, listens to jazz, has sex, and drives around in stolen cars with his buddy Dean Moriarty (aka Neal Cassady).

Some people think that the message of “On the Road” is that rules and responsibilities get in the way of really living. This may have been true for Kerouac’s world of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Freedom is doing whatever you want while you have the money for it, to Kerouac. People who don’t like the book think the main characters are self-involved, self-serving leaches on their friends and society. While it’s true that Paradise and Moriarty flout many laws, they are also very patriotic and interested in the artistic world around them. They both read and frequent jazz clubs. Cassady wrote two novels in his lifetime, both roman à clefs like Kerouac’s books. Cassady even read Shakespeare while in prison for stealing a car. It’s hard to imagine the same scenario today.

But what “On the Road” is really about is Kerouac’s love and esteem for his great friend Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) and the love of his country and the people in it. Breaking the law for Kerouac is only a means to an end. It’s a way of fully consuming everything that’s in front of him, it’s not a way of life. Kerouac is not a degenerate criminal. For example, during one of his trips. Kerouac stops at a roadside diner in the middle of nowhere for ice cream and apple pie. He so eloquently describes how delicious the apple pie is that the reader wants to go out and get a slice of apple pie themselves! Then he remarks how he hears a man laughing and that it’s the greatest laugh he has ever heard. Throughout the book Kerouac has nothing but good things to say about people. He never has a negative word for anyone. That’s the kind of man Kerouac is—always positive, always celebrating the good in people and places. “On the Road” is an ode to the simpler things in life—love, friendship, sex, laughter—outside the suffocating confines of societal structure.

This book has captivated generations of readers and influenced millions of people in so many ways. Some, like Kerouac, ventured out on the road to see their own country up close. Others were intrigued by his “stream of consciousness” style of writing, preferring long sentences without commas. Kerouac espoused the philosophy that once a sentence was written you shouldn’t go back and revise it because you can never be in the same frame of mind you were when you originally wrote that sentence, paragraph, or chapter. (Although in practice, Kerouac revised rather heavily.) The list of artists influenced by Kerouac includes such luminaries as Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Hunter S. Thompson, David Bowie, Jerry Garcia, Tom Waits, and Van Morrison. One cannot quantify Kerouac’s influence on any movie based on characters on a road trip from, “Easy Rider” to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” to “Thelma and Louise.”

I read “On the Road” for the first time when I was 26 years old. I think it was the perfect time. If I had read it much sooner I don’t think I would have been able to appreciate the yearning to break free from the grip pf society and find my own road of freedom. My road was the way Kerouac wrote and lived his life. It inspired me as it had generations before me. Halfway through reading the book I put it down and said to myself, “This is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read.” An astonishing statement I thought at the time since I had already read many of the greatest authors of the world. I thought I was beyond being blown away. But it was the perfect storm. I was the right age, I loved jazz, I loved to travel, I may have been known to have a drink or two at the time. I was the ideal candidate. I immersed myself in Kerouac and read all his books as well as many other ones by the Beat Generation writers and poets. Kerouac rewrote “On the Road” in a more Avante Garde style as a homage to his friend and muse Neal Cassady called “Visions of Cody.” It is a difficult read, full of long sentences that go on for pages with minimal if any punctuation. But it is well worth the effort. It further illuminates the relationship between Kerouac and Cassady and the love shared between the great friends.

The publication of “On the Road” made Kerouac a celebrity, something he neither wanted nor embraced. The Beat Generation entered pop culture and soon people were wearing all black with goatees and bongos, snapping their fingers to jazz and reading bad poetry. In the stores you could buy your own do it DIY Beatnik set complete with paste on goatee and beret. But Kerouac wanted to be a significant writer likes his heroes William Saroyan and Thomas Wolfe. He wanted to be a serious man of letters who would have young writers come to his door and ask for advice. Instead he was rejected by his contemporaries as a popular fad. Truman Capote famously said of Kerouac, “That’s not writing, it’s typing.” The only kids that came to his doorstep wanted to get drunk with him. This was all a great blow to Kerouac and he turned to alcohol for solace. He became a bitter, reactionary in his middle age, lashing out at the very kids he inspired and their successors the hippies. After alienating all of his friends, he died of a stomach hemorrhage brought on by years of alcohol abuse. He was only 47.