Pointless Journeying

[mtvessel]

Jul 2013
On the Road - Jack Kerouac - Penguin Modern Classics, 2000
* * *
Let us praise Jack Kerouac's mother, who inadvertantly funded the writing of a classic. In the first section, Kerouac is constantly running out of money and waiting for the next fifty dollars from his long-suffering relative (described as his aunt in the book, a typical example of his light fictionalisation). Needless to say, she receives no thanks.

This is the book that defined the beat culture of the fifties, and having read it I am still no wiser as to what its significance was. The name, according to Kerouac, derives from "beatific" and is meant to have religious overtones. I certainly think it is over-rated and less interesting than many people seem to find it.

The story, such as it is, describes Kerouac's criss-crossing journeys across the United States in his fictional guise as Sal Paradise, most often in the company of his muse and friend Dean Moriarty (a pseudonym with unfortunate and distracting associations for fans of Sherlock Holmes). Various other members of the beat generation appear - Alan Ginsberg is Carlo Marx and William Burroughs is Old Bull. There is a great deal of drinking, drug taking, smoking and casual sex.

The fundamental problem was that I didn't like the main character. I think we are meant to see Dean Moriarty as a holy fool who is wise in his foolishness, but I just saw someone mistaking hedonism for self-discovery. A friend once remarked that there are few things more boring than listening to a druggie talking about his latest trip, and for me, the same applies to the descriptions of Moriarty's outrageous and selfish behaviour. I much preferred the bits of the book that he wasn't in, where Kerouac simply observes late 40s America. These are fascinating. The war evidently hit quite hard and the ways in which the poorer members of American society got about, from use of car shares to hitchhiking, make for some colourful encounters with interesting people.

The dialogue reflects the mores of the time, with un-PC words for black people and casual homosexual insults, but in general there is a pleasingly unjudgemental attitude to skin colour and sexual orientation. The same, alas, cannot be said for the female characters who are seen mostly as drags on the male characters and as sex objects.

For me, the most interesting aspect of the book was Kerouac's writing style. He famously typed the first draft in just three weeks using sheets taped into a continuous roll so that he didn't have to keep changing them. While subsequent revisions indicate that considerable thought and literary judgement was in fact exercised, the result is a highly subjective style that makes the link between the self-consciously arty stream of consciousness writing of Joyce and Virginia Wolfe and the gonzo journalism of Hunter S Thompson (and hence almost all journalism since). The writing really takes off when he is describing jazz music, where there is a poetic energy that is notably absent elsewhere.

But ultimately, it all seems a bit meaningless, as random and haphazard as the journeys themselves. Maybe that's the point, but if so, you don't really need to write an entire book to make it.

Comments

[ingaborg.livejournal.com]

I read it years ago (when I was nearer the age when this sort of thing might seen cool) and I remember nothing specific about it, except it was rather dull and didn't seem to contain any great insights or even particularly enjoyable experiences.