I just finished reading Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road'
I liked it.
Forging ahead to some depth,
I understand -a little- how the book has left such a watermark on an age. How it defined and helped inspire the unfettered joy that the beats and hippies seem to be trying to capture.
I loved seeing a man develop a style of writing that was wholly his own, distinct from every other style out there.
I did not like the easy, idealized misogyny of the book; how women were picked up and put down again because every single female character in the book is only a thing used for 'kicks.'
I did not like the incessant name dropping, Jack Kerouac's need to mention every single prominent person he knew over and over again.
I did not like the times where we lost the forest to the trees. If at times the book was sublime poetry, at other times it was the inane twitterings of a man wholly captivated by his life's minutia.
In the end I don't like Dean, and all of Kerouac's brave literary worship at the feet of his idol can not undue the unbound amoral soul staring back out.
I think maybe one of the most important aspects of the book is how it will be forever a clear delineation of humanity between those who can appreciate, or at least forgive, Dean for being Dean and those who can't.
I think I can forgive Dean, and the Deans in my life.
But more then anything the book made me think of my life. Of my friends, and the madness that drives us to converse till three in the morning. Oh the holy incidentals that upend me and leave me gasping. And more then anything, 'On the Road' makes me want to spend hours telling my life story to my friends as we drive on and on down the road.
My short story/novel chapter is being published over at the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine Link. It was one of the finalist for Dunesteef's Broken Mirror Event, where every story is based on the same premise (in this case, 'Someone arrives to town and discovers that everyone is the same.') This is incredibly awesome. Let me know what you think!
