It is impossible to imagine why any reader would enjoy this book unless they too long for Neal Cassady to tickle their prostate.  This wretched exercise in homoerotic mythopoetics is almost
exclusively based on Kerouac's infatuation with Cassady, a by-all-accounts beautiful young man who was, meanwhile, little more than a bisexual, car-stealing, alcoholic, drug-addled punk.

Towards the end of the book, as Kerouac lies ill in Mexico and Cassady, quickie divorce from his wife in hand, abandons him to head back to New York & marry anew, we can't help feeling that Kerouac's gotten what he deserved.

But the epitaph for this "novel" must, inevitably, be Truman Capote's brilliant bon mot, On the Road "isn't writing; it's typing."  An immensely stupid and unwarrantedly respected piece of dreck.

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (F) Orrin C. Judd

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Jack Kerouac Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Jack Kerouac
    -AUDIO: Jack Kerouac reads On The Road Audiobook with English subtitles: 28-minute recitation by Jack Kerouac from his book On the Road that was recorded on an acetate disc in the 1950s but thought lost for decades, and had only recently been rediscovered at the time of release September 14, 1999. (YouTube)
    -
    -ESSAY: Irregular Beats: The Surprising Politics of Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg (Robert Dean Lurie, 04/30/2024, Merion West)
    -ESSAY: The accidental book review that made Jack Kerouac famous (Ronald K.L. Collins, December 13, 2019, Washington Post)
    -ESSAY: Who was the most right-wing member of the Beat Generation?: On the Abbeys and the Beats (Bill Kauffman, July 16, 2022, The Spectator)
    -ESSAY: Jack Kerouac at 100: Part 1 (of 2): On his 100th birthday, I consider whether the King of the Beats still speaks to us today—or is just a dated relic of a hipster past (Ted Gioia, Mar 11, 2022, the honest Broker)
    -ESSAY: Jack Kerouac: still roadworthy after 100 years: The author of On the Road had a messy, contradictory life. Yet he’s as relevant as ever – and not just for obsessed young men (David Barnett, 13 Mar 2022, The Observer)
    -ESSAY: Kerouac's lifelong love of baseball (Dan Cichalski, March 11, 2022, MLB)
    -ESSAY: On and off the road: Jack Kerouac’s reputation should rest on his whole oeuvre — not just his most famous novel (Malcolm Forbes, 3/12/22, The Critic)
    -ESSAY: Time for Jack Kerouac to hit the road: He and the Beats aren’t nearly as good as annoying young men imagine (Francesca Peacock, March 11, 2022, The Spectator)
    -ESSAY: What Can We Learn From Jack Kerouac’s Archives?: The writer would have been 100 this week (Tobias Carroll, 3/11/22, Inside Hook)
    -ESSAY: Kerouac at 100: He led readers to bohemian rhapsodies, then Buddhism (Randy Rosenthal, March 10, 2022, American Scholar)
    -ESSAY: The failure of Jack Kerouac: The king of the counterculture ended up a reactionary (PARK MACDOUGALD, March 2022, UnHerd)
    -ESSAY: John Clellon Holmes on the Funeral of His Longtime Friend Jack Kerouac: “I hoped that no one would ever mourn me so self-centeredly.” (John Clellon Holmes, March 11, 2022, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: On the Centenary of Jack Kerouac’s Birth, Rarely Seen Archival Material from His Publisher: “You are right in thinking I am interested in Kerouac and his work.” (Literary Hub, March 11, 2022)
    -ESSAY: Jack Kerouac’s Journey: For On the Road’s author, whose centenary is this month, it was a struggle to write, then a struggle to live with its fame. “My work is found, my life is lost,” he wrote. (Joyce Johnson, March 2, 2022, NY Review of Books)
    -ESSAY: Why Kerouac's Anti-Semitism Matters: How to read an unlikely reactionary. 9Christopher Orlet, 1/13/22, Hedgehog Review)
    -ESSAY: “On the Road,” Again (John Tottenham, MARCH 12, 2021, LA Review of Books)
    -ALBUM REVIEW: Jack Kerouac: Poetry for the Beat Generation/Blues and Haikus (Will Pinfold, Spectrum Culture)
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Book-related and General Links:
    -Biographical Sketch
    -Dharma Beat (ezine)
    -Kerouac Links
    -ARCHIVES : "Jack Kerouac" (Salon)
    -AUDIO : "On the Road" By Jack Kerouac
    -ESSAY: In the Kerouac Archive (Douglas Brinkley, The Atlantic)
    -REVIEW:  Ladder to Nirvana: A review of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (Phoebe Lou Adams, The Atlantic, O C T O B E R   1 9 5 7)
    -Flashback: Kerouac and the Beats (The Atlantic)
    -ESSAY: KEROUAC AT THE END OF THE ROAD (Richard Hill. NY Times Book Review)
    -ESSAY: Desolation Angel  Ann Douglas finds the road less traveled in Jack Kerouac's latest volume of letters, which documents the novelist's rise to fame and the horrors of being constantly misunderstood. (Ann Douglas, VLS)
    -ESSAY : Kerouac's estate is full of surprises (HILLEL ITALIE, August 22, 2001, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
    -ESSAY : A glimpse of Kerouac's famous 'scroll'  Original 'On the Road' hits the road this week (David Kipen, SF Chronicle)
    -REVIEW : of Atop an Underwood by Jack Kerouac (Jeffrey Bartlett, SF Chronicle)
    -REVIEW: The Only People for Him The Portable Jack Kerouac and Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956, edited by Ann Charters (Ralph Lombreglia, The Atlantic)

oj:

I guess I'm just a lost college kid. Fortunately for me I'm not persecuted for my views. Hopefully you will never have any power in this country. We don't need another Hitler...

- Tim

- May-11-2005, 16:42

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