On the Road

Jack reading on the Steve Allen show.

I'm going to out myself for something right now: "On the Road" is my favorite book ever written and if you say it's not the best book ever written I'm likely to fight you, but guaranteed will ignore any comment you ever make of any literary notion again. So...

Oftentimes, when outsiders, or the media, or anyone who is not involved with something tries to label or typify that something, they are so far from correct its borderline offensive. Not the case with "On the Road." Penguin Classics hails it as "The novel that defined a generation," the New York Times says "a historic occasion...the most important utterance yet made by the generation," and another NYT critic writes "it is not so much a novel as a long affectionate lark inspired by the so called "beat" generation."

So how does wide eyed Sal Paradise's odyssey single handedly typify a culture? And while we're at it, let me clarify, this "culture" for the majority of it's lifespan, was four or six guys sharing what they thought was beautiful writing. So, Cassidy, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burrughs are somehow captured in the pages of one novel? Yes.

Shallowly, all of these characters pop up inside the journey taken in On the Road. More densely, Kerouac is able to capture two sides of the beatnik spectrum.

"Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line I knew the pearl would be handed to me" (8) sets off a young Sal Paradise on his first attempt at going west. Of course, he fails completely and returns home; but it is undeniable the optimistic and juvenile sense of freedom he feels, first setting out to hitchhike and claim the pearl of the nation out west.

And of course, as many beats would discover during their time, the pearl isn't out there. Burroughs never found his final fix, for example. So Kerouac has crossed the nation, broken hearts and been played by Cassidy innumerable times, been out of the country to the bottom of Mexico and abandoned. Where does that leave him?

"I finally came to understand that he was gone. By that time he was driving back alone through those banana mountains, this time at night. When I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossible complexity of his life" (302). It leaves our hero alone and bitter.

The experience, in conclusion, appears to be worthwhile. "So in America when the sun goes down...nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody" Kerouac reflects on his journeys and Cassidy in such a way that is neither shallow nor bitter.

So how does that leave us? The generation?

It was loud, fast and only fulfilling after realizing that most of it was a waste? No, of course not. I see On the Road, as the "beatnik essential book," serving one purpose. Showing the value of reflecting on experience. Does it always turn out that there was value? No, again, of course not. But, after reflection, there is always real, true experience had.

The Beatniks valued this. Kerouac did. On the Road glorifies it.

So what's wrong with romanticizing a nation during its darkest and (according to them) it's phoniest? Nothing. It is patriotism like never before seen.

And its value obvious, here we are decades later still looking at the Crazy Dumbsaints for help.