I read this book a little too late in life probably. Maybe if I read it about 15 years ago fresh out of high school, I would have been struck with wonder - and wanderlust. But, I found my own road with that over time anyway. Not as extreme as Sal and Dean, but I'm still happy with the choices and where things delivered me.

Anyway, on with the book - I think that this would be worth a read again because I came across a lot of symbolism and it didn't seem to be hidden - so an easy read you can feel smart about... ( )

Another book that is best read in high school. ( )

On The Road tells the story of Jack Kerouac's adventures on the road, often with Neal Cassady. Meant to be one of the best examples of the 'beat' generation, On The Road focuses on the open road, detail, jazz and the quest for meaning and experience.

Personally, I found the book quite interesting although there were times when I found the excessive detail a bit boring (e.g. the descriptions of jazz). However, the journeys and even the life in the different towns and cities was interesting. There is a range of characters in the book, which can at times be difficult to keep track of especially as they are mentioned in one chapter then completely forgotten about and then mentioned again.

An interesting read... ( )

I can't deny it: 'On the Road' shows its age, and as I grow older, I find more flaws. It's famously uneven, and while it soars in sections, it plods along in others. Its world-view is often naive and obsolete, and yet, it's an enthusiastic celebration of life and a book that will always have a special place in my heart. ( )

I didn't read this until I was fifty and it was the noughties. I should have read it when I was twenty and it was the seventies because now it's a bit of a snooze. Druggy road trips - shrug. It's cool to chill out but no great science or art has been truly inspired by marijuana or stronger. So, is this a good book? Not really, but it is probably a reasonably significant one. It stands as the representative of an era and a generation but it's not particularly insightful. That Kerouac managed to write anything coherent at all is the main achievement. Occasionally good on jazz. ( )

a necessary read. ( )

I returned to this with no small amount of trepidation. What would this book of my youth read like from my present vantage point? I was able to appreciate it (the actual writing) even more, as I could set aside my youthful fascination with who each of the characters was in "real life." Is it sort of a sloppy book? Well, yeah, there's lots of "wows" and "wonderful's", but in the midst of that you run across something like this, describing Laredo, TX: "It was the bottom and dregs of America where all the heavy villains sink, where disoriented people have to go to be near a specific elsewhere they can slip into unnoticed." Gems are sprinkled throughout the book. I was also struck by the sadness, melancholy, Buddha-wisdom that permeates this early work, which I thought all turned up later in his life...it was all here. Thanks for reminding me, Jack, that we are all, always, one way or another, "[b:on the road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21E8H3D1JSL._SL75_.jpg|3355573]." ( )

I returned to this with no small amount of trepidation. What would this book of my youth read like from my present vantage point? I was able to appreciate it (the actual writing) even more, as I could set aside my youthful fascination with who each of the characters was in "real life." Is it sort of a sloppy book? Well, yeah, there's lots of "wows" and "wonderful's", but in the midst of that you run across something like this, describing Laredo, TX: "It was the bottom and dregs of America where all the heavy villains sink, where disoriented people have to go to be near a specific elsewhere they can slip into unnoticed." Gems are sprinkled throughout the book. I was also struck by the sadness, melancholy, Buddha-wisdom that permeates this early work, which I thought all turned up later in his life...it was all here. Thanks for reminding me, Jack, that we are all, always, one way or another, "[b:on the road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21E8H3D1JSL._SL75_.jpg|3355573]." ( )

I returned to this with no small amount of trepidation. What would this book of my youth read like from my present vantage point? I was able to appreciate it (the actual writing) even more, as I could set aside my youthful fascination with who each of the characters was in "real life." Is it sort of a sloppy book? Well, yeah, there's lots of "wows" and "wonderful's", but in the midst of that you run across something like this, describing Laredo, TX: "It was the bottom and dregs of America where all the heavy villains sink, where disoriented people have to go to be near a specific elsewhere they can slip into unnoticed." Gems are sprinkled throughout the book. I was also struck by the sadness, melancholy, Buddha-wisdom that permeates this early work, which I thought all turned up later in his life...it was all here. Thanks for reminding me, Jack, that we are all, always, one way or another, "[b:on the road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21E8H3D1JSL._SL75_.jpg|3355573]." ( )

"the original bromance"
"masturbatory"

mucha energia. muy inocente. muy bobo. muy irresponsable. muy infantil. muy adolescente. muy romantico. muy lirico emblematico de un periodo supongo. imaginando o reimaginando los estados unidos despues de la depresion y la segunda guerra mundial. pero tambien muy solipsista. no hay interes en entender nada. solo en verse y oirse declamar. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1284437...

A book with hidden shallows, I felt. The narrator, Sal, tells us of his affection for and inspiration by his friend Dean Moriarty, and expects us to admire Dean's exploitation of friends, relatives and women to maintain his transient, commitment-free lifestyle. I couldn't bring myself to do so. The book's defenders make claims that it tracks a mystical, religious journey; the journey I will agree to, but I saw no encouraging signs of spiritual growth. Each new destination seems much the same as the others: different boozing partners, different girls, but no big difference. The style is indeed entertaining and engaging, but I felt at the end that this short book was probably three times too long. ( )

I didn't like this book, but it was readable. I really wanted to slap the narrator, Sal, for supporting and putting up with Dean. If ever there was a fictitious character that I was hoping would meet a grisly end it would be Dean. Instead he lived 'happily ever after' marching on his merry way leaving a trail of chaos in his path.I was willing to stick with this group of lowlifes for the duration of the story, but they lost me when they made the trip to Mexico. I know the book was written in the early 20th century, but I am pretty sure society looked down upon grown men cavorting with very young teenage girls even then. Dean, Sal, and the rest of the group all happily "carry on" with these children in a whorehouse in Mexico.Dean, the disgusting pig that he is, even makes remarks about a very young child that they pass by on the road. I was really hoping he would get hit by a bus or thrown in jail to rot.As a group, the male characters were/are perfect representations of a lifestyle that I loathe.This book is going in the donation pile and I wish I hadn't bought it. I thought it would be a kind of a lighthearted and fun slacker story. Instead it is yet another overrated bit of rubbish rescued from the sands of time because people read too much into it. ( )

An exhilarating American tale ( )

The novel that was my introduction to the Beat Generation ( )

I found this book to be incredibly tedious. Page after page passes and nothing happens. The writing isn't consistently good, and the characters are flat and hard to like. There were a few, beautiful passages, but they were so far between that reading this book was not worth it for me. ( )

This book has a long reach; on reading it I find all kinds of echoes, the Grateful Dead singing about the American Night in "Black-Throated Wind," the same reference popping up in a novel I read the following day, and so on. Without Kerouac you never get Hunter S. Thompson, or, indeed, any of his contemporaries. On the Road should remind you that the 60s counterculture that followed was not the product of baby boom hippies, but of their forerunners, the beats; and also, that the so-called "greatest generation" so beloved of certain conservative revisionists in fact included the Beat Generation, who were in every way save their hairstyles proto-hippies. This book is, in short, at the centre of where it all began.

But ... its great influence doesn't excuse the fact that it's built on a fundamentally silly idea, that artists are somehow special, and that great art is the product of a derangement of the senses. You would think these romantic notions would have long since faded away, but no; some people still believe that if you step outside the mainstream, get drunk, and play with drugs, then any old crap you vomit onto the page, and indeed the events of your everyday life, must be Literature.

This is where Kerouac was dead wrong, and perhaps the weakest aspects of On the Road stem from the fact that he was writing his own life. Not only that, but he was in his late twenties at the time, not a period at which we might expect a finely honed sense of one's own irrelevance. So we have continual references to people who have nothing to do with the story itself, pointless anecdotes, and a narrator with no sense of his own reflection.

But ... we also have marvellous language, never more marvellous than when Kerouac writes about jazz: he sizzles and pops through these passages, which give us some of the finest music writing you'll ever read. These passages alone make the book worth reading. And there is no denying that whatever its limitations, On the Road just works. So while this book may not age as well as its worshippers might hope, it remains worth reading.

This book is essentially what I would call a rite of passage. And yet, ironically (and I fully realize that using that word puts me right with the people I'm against in this), it has also come to represent a variety of clichés throughout the "creative" world. It's mocked by literary snobs and hipsters alike, especially when yet another young creative soul finds inspiration in that often quoted passage, "the only ones for me are the mad ones."

I find such judgements to be harsh. Kerouac's writing has inspired several generations since On the Road's initial publication. It's subtly in it's message that life is in the living and the creating alongside it's subversive stream of consciousness style and honesty, makes this classic an essential read during adolescence and then again in your twenties, thirties, fourties, all throughout your life. Each time a different perspective on the work and it's meaning to you will surely be gained.

A classic. ( )

This was a hard book for me to finish. It was rambling, plotless, with characters that I didn't like, but didn't dislike enough to care what happened to them. They drank, partied, moved on, RINSE, REPEAT. Any point Kerouac was trying to get across gets lost in the fact that these guys are useless druggie trash and completely disrespect laws, other people, even themselves. (Note: my husband liked it more than I did. Maybe more of a guy book.) ( )

Swell, feverish, late-adolescent genius. ( )

What more can be said about this classic. A great read. Read while backpacking through Europe in 1999. ( )

A very dangerous and subversive book. Whenever I read it -- which I have done about 10 times -- I have to leave home and go travelling. ( )

I loved this book when I read it in high school, but I realize when I hear people talking about it that I have absolutely no memory of it whatsoever. ( )

Yes, the main characters (Dean in particular) are 'unmotivated leecherous jerks', as a previous review underlines - I would add extremely annoying - but that's not really the point. The point is he's in love with LIFE and he knows 'TIME and how to slow it down' and the book definitely makes you become like that at least for a while. Until you grow old and cranky and depressed, that is. Then you start yawning. ( )

I know this is a classic, but it's not aging well. The characters (including the author) are just too self-indulgent, selfish, and ultimately people you can neither like nor admire, or really even read about. This may have been revolutionary when published, and it's very well written, but it was just sad in the end. Kerouac obviously wanted to get a message out about conformity, but in the end, it's really a message about too much drugs and drink being a lot worse than conformity. ( )

A classic of mid-twentieth-century literature, and a book that help inspire a generation. I still found it nearly unreadable. ( )