I'll probably get a new one reamed for this or at least told that I'm totally uncool but I just finished reading Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" and, though I thought it was alright, (Look out! Here it comes!) I didn't think it was all that great. I can't remember reading it in the way back. If I did it was a required reading thingy in high school and I usually didn't remember much of what I read when it came to assigned stuff. I don't know. Maybe it was something you had to read when it was fresh and new and your brain hadn't already been loaded with other literary works. Or maybe it's been so long that it's no longer as "outre" as it was back then. I guess it did give a lot of people their first glimpse into the Beat Generation and "sex & drugs & ..." jazz and lightly touched on existential thinking but I really wasn't all that taken with it.

I thought Dean Moriarty was a jerk. Sort of like the personification of a cat .... party, sex, do what you want (even at other people's expense, though not maliciously), more sex, more party, more sex, dump wife (lover), party, sex, no taking responsibility, party, sex, etc., etc.. Yas, yas, he was into music and finding the groove and finding "IT" and all that but I think I would have throttled the lad if I had known him in reality! Or at least toss him out the door!

While I thought it pretty much had continuity, I didn't think that it tied a lot together. It would sometimes jerk ahead with nothing in between. And there was stuff that he seemed to focus on that I was waiting to get to a meaning that turned out to be nothing at all.

So, I don't know. Didn't think that it was all of the "mystical journey" that a lot of folks have made it out to be. Is it me? Don't know. Maybe it's like what Arthur C. Clarke said about reading Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan & John Carter on Mars creator) ... if you're over eighteen years old it is too late for you (Not for me. I didn't read Burroughs until much later and loved it!). So, am I not gettin' something here or has my life been so weird that "On The Road" seemed like "what's the big deal here?" to me?

sorry you didn't get much out of your reading of On The Road zap.
I do believe it is a lot to do with your state of mind, and your awareness of what the book represented to the audience that it was presented to.

It's the same as if I showed my kids the movie Citizen Kane. To my kids, it's just a black and white movie! How ancient! They're not looking at the film for its significance. The cinematography, the editting, deep focus techniques, low pans, things that were unheard of or rarely seen before, now all taken for granted. The subject matter also requires some knowledge of the current events of the time to best appreciate the film.
How many people from our generation come upon Hearst Castle on the Pacific coast and think of Xanadu??
I came to On the Road only after reading about the life and times of Kerouac. This also helped my appreciation. Ann Charters had a very good biography on Kerouac many years ago. Also, having read about the escapades of Neal Cassidy in the Ken Kesey Merry Prankster period also helped. I'd also met Allen Ginsberg a couple of times, so by reading On the Road with all the background, it gave more clarity to the characters in play, and certainly reading it as the prosetic travelogue that it was certainly helped... Finally, I read it with my own 'on the road' adventure in my memory, and looked for where we collided, and where we diverged.

in other words, i guess you sometimes have to be "there" (in mind or spirit) to fully "get" some stuff... No big deal if you don't. It is just a book, right?

I don't think that it was so much that. I just wasn't impressed all that much. I will admit to not being too much in awe of a lot of things (don't know if it's good or bad) . A few, yeah, but not a lot. This wasn't one of 'em. Yes, the prose and passion of the road I got and appreciated. I don't know. Maybe I expected some sort of cosmic yada-yada relevance. I did not dislike it! I just wasn't lit on fire by it. I still tend to think of humans as being monkeys with opposable thumbs and expensive toys. Maybe that contributes to my lack of excitement once I get around to gettin' around to something. By the way, I thought Citizen Kane was great and have absolutely nothing against Black & White films.

all the characters are sorta jerks and all were into experimenting and not giving a damn what other people thought. I think that is the point, there is no cosmic yada yada, what you make of it is what you make of it. If you like poems, Kerouac was pretty good at it, especially if you get recordings of him doing them. McClure and Ferlinghetti are good as well. Ginsberg was always to into shcoking everybody for me. Maybe it is the shocking nature of Howl and he was going for a formula? William Burroughs is just fun (although he likes to shock as well). His recordings are awesome! I particularly like his readings from the New Testament!

I think Arnie's take is right. Damn I wish I'd said that! I don't think you're seeing it from beat eyes. I think maybe we've become too sophisticated to remember simpler times...

I like Boris's Karloff's readings of Kipling's Just So Stories. They are really deep. How The Elephant Got His Trunk is my fave.
He makes you feel like you really are at "the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River all set about with Fever Trees"

good thing Jack was male or he would have been locked up (commited,as many female would- be rebels were by their folks and family in the 50's)

Anyway,it was all about the "boys club (gang)"

If I ever get to Lowell which isn't too far away, I will have to check out Jack's House.

[quote="Goofus"] I don't think you're seeing it from beat eyes. quote]
I hope not if, like PS said, a lot of the characters were jerks. Sort of like "A Clockwork Orange" types on a more benign, less violent scale. Heck, even in "Clockwork" you can wind up sympathizing with Alex, even though he was a violent murderer.

Michael McClure wrote a really good book about the Beat "Rebel without a Cause!" thing called Scratching the Beat Surface where he tries to put things into perspective. He seems to me the most underated of the "Beats". I have some collaboration material between him (McClure) and Terry Riley (of In C fame), the Godfather of minimalist music I suppose. It is pretty good. I used to have a sound byte on cassette of McClure and Kesey discussing Harry Partch with a recording of Partch music followed by a recording from an early kool aide test with the Dead playing (sort of). That was a strange recording that came over the radio waves one late night in the 80's when I was working in a microbiology lab all night long and was near a boom box and happened to have a cassette handy (I was so ambitious then). Anyway, I noticed McClure has recently collaborated with Ray Manzarak (I hope I spelt his name right, you have to buy directly from Manzarak). I've not sent any money as I am very much a procrastinater, but I might purchase some soon. Burroughs Dead Roads Trilogy is interesting if you want some bizarre reading

This is the end (do do do) the end
my friend (do do do)

There's a pile of stuff from the 60s & early 70s that I thought was amazing stuff back then, in particular, some movies. One, similar to the "On The Road" deal of finding one's self whilst traveling about the country, I sat through six times (back in the day when you could go into a movie theater all day for one admission price ... like mentioned in a section of "On The Road") because I thought it was so good. Now I have trouble sitting through the whole thing. And it ain't just me. I've talked to several other folks about stuff like that and they had the same reaction.

There was a "60 Minutes" rebroadcast last night on CMT on The Eagles. Steve Kroft said to Don Henley, "Hotel California". Everybody wants to know what the song means."
"I know. It's so boring," says Henley.

Zap.....I never saw the light on the road either. I found the dharma bums much more fullfilling and representative of the later beat>hippie ara.

I thought Hotel California was a prison?

I know what you mean about those hippy 60's movies. Did you ever see Alice's Restaurant?

Uh, oh!