Book #12: On the Road

Book #12: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

February 10, 2013


This particular book has been one that I've intended to read for a long time. It's such an integrated part of our culture that I've always been familiar with the basic premise, and I was fascinated by the idea of jumping in the car (or better, hitchhiking!) and seeing the country. On the Road is the fictionalized stories of Kerouac's travels around the continent, from about 1947 to 1950. The narrator of the story is Sal Paradise, who represents Kerouac himself. He is a young writer, and he is quite aimless. But the story isn't so much about him as about Dean Moriarty, a fictionalized version of Neal Cassady. Prior to reading this book, I had no idea who this person was, but I found the character of Dean so interesting that I looked up some information on him. More on that in a bit.

I will admit that I'm somewhat disappointed  not to know more about Sal. I mean, even if the author didn't want to lay out his life story in this book, he could have given more on the background of Sal, his character. When Sal isn't tramping around the country, he stays with his aunt in New York City. How did he end up with his aunt? This isn't really explained. We know that Sal's father is dead (perhaps his mother, too, but I don't remember this being mentioned as a certainty). As a writer, Sal isn't exactly rolling in wealth, but during the time of his nonconsecutive travels he does have some success with a published book. We also know that Sal spent some time in the Navy, and he gets some money from his GI bill. He's a student while in New York...don't know if he graduates or not, though. That's really about the extent that we have on Sal's background. Throughout the story, he is much more interested in sharing Dean's story, and it's certainly a fascinating one to tell.

Dean is insane. He constantly makes wild plans, and usually follows through on them. If he's not chattering away at a mile a minute, sharing his wisdom with listeners who can't understand his ramblings, he's silent and swaying and taking in life with a silly smile. But he's not happy. He's constantly running...not really away from something, but toward something, but he doesn't seem to be able to identify what IT is. He takes the metaphor of life as being a road quite seriously, and he is convinced that he will find something better than ever in the next physical destination. He's pretty young at the start of the book, very early 20's (compared to Sal's mid-to-late 20's), and by the end of the book he's on his third marriage, living with his second wife (from whom he is legally divorced) in San Francisco while his current wife is in New York. At one point, he laments the fact that he's such a shoddy father; he doesn't hold down a constant job, and he doesn't even stick around long enough to take care of his children or wives properly. But he's too busy trying to find IT, and at the end of the book, it is uncertain what IT is.

As much of a scoundrel as Dean is, I found him fascinating, so I read up on Neal Cassady (ie, I looked him up on good old Wikipedia). He was basically just the same as Dean is described in the book, a rambler who can easily make friends (but doesn't easily keep them, with his shiftless ways). He wasn't famous for anything except being himself, and he is considered to be an American legend. This book is not the only one that depicts Cassady; he's supposed to be the inspiration behind the main character in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (haven't read it...yet, but I do love the film, featuring Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles of all time); he's mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's famous poem "Howl" (who is depicted in On the Road as the equally fascinating Carlo Marx); and, he is featured in Hunter S. Thompson's nonfictional Hell's Angels. And that is not the extent of it! Also, Cassady spent time living with the Grateful Dead, and the band payed homage to him in the song The Other One (I am ashamed to admit that I am not familiar with this particular song; I grew up listening to a lot of it, since my old man is a neo-hippie Dead Head himself, and I grew to appreciate the music; I'm listening to an 18-minute live version of this as I write this, featuring an appropriately insane drum solo at the beginning). Cassady was not published himself during his lifetime, but his memoirs and letters were published posthumously.

But I believe that On the Road is an essential American novel not only because of its depiction of this legendary man, but also because of Kerouac's beautiful descriptions of the various American landscapes (and Mexico, too, near the end). Kerouac's writing style can be a little erratic at times, either because he's trying to capture the frantic, drug-induced lifestyle that Sal lived, or maybe because he was tripping balls when he wrote the book himself. Either way, he's descriptions of American cities and countryside are poetic. But it cannot be ignored that Sal, for all his bumming around, is spoiled. I was most annoyed at the section in the book where he takes up with a single mother, a Mexican woman living in squalor in California. Sal and this woman meet in LA, and she takes him to her hometown, a dusty little place where most of the people are farm workers living in tents. He romanticizes this lifestyle, even becoming a poorly paid cotton-picker himself, and for the short time he is there, he throws himself wholeheartedly into the role of family man. But when he grows tired of it, and when he gets his next check from his aunt, he takes off, back to his real life. Meanwhile, the woman he supposedly loved and her child are stuck in the same place. They will never have the opportunity to travel and see America the way that Sal has; they may not have much of a chance to go anywhere.

I was also very annoyed when Sal thought that he "wanted to be a Negro" (the book takes place in the '40s, when such a term was acceptable). He described the black people that he encounters as being carefree, joyful, and he longed to be like them. Clearly, he was either completely ignorant to the treatment of the entire race, or he was choosing to ignore it. Either way, this thought struck me as being a really stupid statement by a privileged white man. However, with the whole "beat" scene that he and his friends are into, the races are often mixed, and Sal would probably have only had the chance to mingle with black people in such a setting, where whiskey and wine are flowing and jazz horns are blowing.

As a matter of fact, this book is considered to be a very important one from the "beat generation," and Cassady and Kerouac and Ginsberg are considered to be icons of that generation. The famous hippies of a decade or two later clearly came from this; in the book, Dean is really into sitting around and having all-night conversations in an attempt to unravel the secrets of life (though Sal finds the conversations between Dean and Carlo to be rambling and aimless). These guys are not really into material possessions, carrying on the road with them just enough to get by (and sometimes not even that much). They smoke pot (they call it 'tea') and do other drugs. They appreciate nature, and other cultures and people (though Dean's blatant homophobia had me irked, especially when he seemed to "dig" everyone else so much), if only for the shallow differences that they view in them. Though Dean had a far from privileged childhood, he still seems like an ignorant white boy when traveling in Mexico, marveling at the novelty of the dark, quiet, calm people there and their poverty-stricken lives.

Anyway, for some reason, the beat generation today is not viewed in the same light as the hippie generation. People still love hippies, and honestly, if the characters in the book really are supposed to represent these important figures of the beat generation, I can see why. Sal and his friends are constantly seeking their "kicks"; when it comes down to it, they're just looking for fun and adventure. At least it seemed like the hippies stood for something, peace on earth and all that. Maybe it's because, during the hippie generation, there was a war on, while in this book Sal only makes a couple of mentions of World War II. Jazz isn't nearly as popular today as rock and roll (I myself prefer the latter, though I do like a dose of jazz every once in a while). The beat generation is all but completely dead; the hippies live and roll on.

Though I view the characters' ignorance and hedonism with disgust, I do envy their adventures. Just to walk out onto the highway, stick out your thumb, and go wherever destiny guides you...that's real freedom right there. That doesn't happen much anymore; hitchhiking is illegal in most places in America, and people are afraid to pick anyone up. I've had the fantasy of dropping everything, packing up a few clothes and my dog, and pulling a Chris McCandless (except without the starving-to-death-in-the-wilderness part, of course), but I'm too tied down with my responsibilities to my family and school and career, which are all very important to me. But then I think of the fate that Neal Cassady suffered, dying young (at age 41) in Mexico, never having really settled down, and probably never finding IT. He had freedom, but it came at a price, I think.

(To the right) The recently-famous homeless hitch-hiker Kai, who got a ride from a crazy guy who attacked some people. Kai, carrying a hatchet,  sprang into action and took the guy down. This is the face of the typical American hitchhiker today. I am certain that Dean would have "dug" him .

(To the left) Silhouette of a jazz band. Sal and his friends were crazy about jazz music (they called it "bop," and it took me longer than I'm proud of to figure out exactly what they were referring to).