On the Road - Jack Kerouac

I first read On the Road at university, but it was the uncensored, original scroll version. This tamer edition is the book that made it to press, with the changes Kerouac was forced to make, such as giving everyone pseudonyms and toning down the language, drugs, and sexual deviancy. For anybody struggling with who's who, Sal Paradise is Jack Kerouac, Dean Moriarty is Neal Cassady, Carlo Marx is Allen Ginsburg, and Old Bull Lee is William Burroughs. These colourful but deeply flawed individuals were key drivers of the 1950s Beat movement, which would later give rise to other countercultures. The Beat movement is steeped in hero worship and highly lauded in academic circles by beard strokers too Conservative and physically timid to follow in the footsteps of their reckless heroes. There is no denying that Kerouac's energetic prose is absolutely addicting to read and much of the book is like a car crash you can't look away from. However, not once did I lose sight of what nasty, terrible people they were.

It may seem somewhat paradoxical to give the book a high rating whilst delivering censure to its players, but the wanderlust and excitement it inspires rises above the sad and squalid lives portrayed therein. Paradise's/Kerouac's maiden voyage across America, before he becomes disillusioned and world weary, is bursting with what Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady would call 'it.' The youthful enthusiasm of the characters later gives way to ruin and despondency as they take too many drugs, drink too much alcohol, and ruin the lives of too many women. The underage brothel scene in Mexico stands out in particular as a line crossed too far and one cannot help but feel a pang of satisfaction when Sal soon after contracts dysentry and is abandoned by best bud Dean, the 'holy conman.' Dean is the most interesting (though detestable) character in the book, with his psychopathic nature and clear signs of extreme attention deficit disorder, with Sal coming across as a pathetic, ragged follower who trails after him like a lost sheep. 

Although I immensely enjoy On the Road, and having thought long and hard on it, I don't share the opinion of my peers that the Beat generation had anything special to say. I do not rate the drug-addled drivel of Burroughs, nor the philosophy and poetry of Ginsberg, and certainly not the ravings of mad dog Neal Cassady. But for all his faults, Jack Kerouac hit on a winning formula with On the Road, a book which doesn't shy away from the gritty realism of toxic friendships, rotten, broken America, and the hopelessness of humanity. It's a dusty, dirty, oily, sweaty, anxiety-wrought book, but one that I can't get enough of. Its protagonists drive back and forth across the breadth of the 'groaning and awful continent' like souls possessed on the smallest excuse, leaving behind a trail of destruction (and robbed gas stations) in their search for enlightenment.

Rating: 4/5