Now for some more profound rambling. I read 'On The Road' as part of my continued efforts to complete the '1001 Books to Read Before you Die' marathon that consumes my autistic mind. 'On The Road' is part of damn near every one of those lists of great books and I figured so many compliers of lists of great books could not be wrong. Right?
I know what I expected from 'On The Road', I expected a profound story of a journey across America where some young men would eventually realise something deep and meaningful about life and would finish their adventure somehow wiser and more enlightened than they were previously. Now I can dig that, I mean plenty of stories involve a journey, hell if you get all metaphysical and what-not every book is a journey of some kind, even if it is just the journey the reader goes on to learn more about the characters (oh-eer). I did the travelling thing (briefly) in my younger, more carefree days and I believe it made me a better person. OK I kinda expected the message at the end of this book to be something I thought would be a bit wanky, pretentious and daft, but I expected to be essentially pleased that the youths were more than they once were because the hit the road.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The two main characters (both of whom have ridiculous names BTW, if you wrote a book with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty as the main characters now-a-days most publishers would probably expire laughing) are young, irritating, drug taking, alcoholic, law breaking, womanising, chauvinistic thugs at the beginning AND at the end of the book. They don't develop, they don't become something, they don't see the error of their ways or develop deep political convictions, they fuck about causing nothing but distress to everyone they encounter and then they the steal a car and drive to another city and proceed to FUCK EVERYONE OVER ONCE MORE!
Never mind the deeply unattractive message this sends to the reader, most of whom I gather are teenage boys, but what about say, I don't know, A PLOT. There is no story here, in the best part of 300 pages the two main characters drive from New York to San Francisco umteen times, often getting to their destination and then driving back after a matter of hours. They regularly pass through the same towns on their journey, normally with the narrator mentioning a car they stole or a girl they slept with or a bar they drank in last time they were in town (yeah I know you did it like 30 pages ago I REMEMBER), but there is nothing built on to that. Not 'there is a girl I slept with 6 months ago- oh look now she has gotten married', no that would involve some direction from this author, they just mention something that happened before and then shrug their shoulders and keep going.
The bonkers character Dean gets married 3 times in the book and leaves each wife at some point to shack up with another one, leaving them with his kids to raise and no money, and this is just OK. It's fine for Dean to do this, and to leave his wife because she objects to him spending all their money on a fancy car and then driving it across the country to go have a drink with someone on the opposite coast and then drive it back and ruin it in the first place AND FURTHERMORE DO THIS ABOUT A GAZILLION TIMES. Not only are these wives unreasonable, but Dean will hit them in the heat of an argument and will find other more dutiful women who will do nothing but smile and cook dinner and proceed to tell them that is how a woman should be. Oh yeah and on several occasions he abandons his friends, including in another country, so he can run off with a different woman. This guy is a total scumbag, Jeremy Kyle would seriously kick his ass, yet I get the impression we're supposed to love him. The narrator, Sal, thinks the sun shines out of this guys backside, even when Dean abandons him half dead of dysentery in Mexico City!
Furthermore what is with the 'stream of conscience' thing? The whole book is written like a poorly edited diary- 'I woke up, and then I ate some breakfast and then I smoked some tea, and then I drove to Denver and then I drank a bottle of whiskey and then I slept with a girl and then I washed my face and then I met up with my friend Ed and then I DIED OF BOREDOM'. I mean seriously the whole thing read like that the whole way through, not to mention pages and pages describing music and bands. The pages just drag on and on in the same boring monotonous tone so you start to forget which town their in and what car their stealing or who one of the many MANY 'friends' that they seem to have in every town is.
Now I know Kerouac wrote the whole thing very quickly on one long piece of paper or some other gimmicky drivel that every hipster will be super keen to tell me, but honestly I don't get it. If Kerouac is so brilliant and revolutionary then why is he writing a book that encouraged young men to act like dicks? This was written in the late 40's/early 50's- men had been acting like dicks for centuries but were just starting to change. Others have suggested to me that the reason I didn't like this was because I didn't read it as a teenager, but honestly even at 16 I'm pretty sure nothing about they characters would ever have appealed to me. I never wanted to be a skint drunken bum with a tendency to screw over my friends and any member of the opposite sex- am I in the minority? So now I am seriously wondering what it is that makes so many people totally love this book? Seriously what? I really want to know.
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