On the Road is for me, like so many others out there, a cherished masterpiece.
An autobiographical portrait of a young man's life - a snapshot of espresso-veined Americana - of chrome polished hot rods on the trail of something more...
Narrated with a raw, gutsy energy - Kerouac was a macho writer with an eye for the particular. Few, even to this day, can describe the ordinary and make it appear epic.
As leader of the Beat Generation - a role that Kerouac vacillitated between personal acceptance and outright rejection - he helped nourish the ideal that life is an open page and we've got artistic license to write what we want on it.
With a whole cast of friends, lovers and fellow travellers, Kerouac recounts his cross-country life as a restless soul in search of identity and freedom, littering the plateux of America's lands with broken promises, failed dreams, nostalgia for moments lost and excitement for moments yet to be lived.
You don't have to be on the road to enjoy this book and its inarticulate, yet profoundly moving, message. A piece of literature that inspires and entertains wherever you may read it.
Kerouac had little patience to sit still and slog it out and was pulled in so many different directions in life that he risked leaving nothing behind.
But that energy, that thirst for what possibilities life could bring to an individual is as refreshing as a breath of air...and significantly, perhaps miraculously, leave us something he did;
A vast library of words as important as any in our schools and libraries.
This book instilled within me a hunger for life from the moment I turned its first page (as it has done countless others before and after me) and this edition conveys the same energy that the author wished to transmit to his original audience and nails its essence to the door.
Kerouac rarely lapsed into self-loathing and criticism or if he did, it was usually superseded by a renewed commitment to engage with the world. The rough was taken with the smooth, bitter pills were swallowed with a shot of espresso and back out the door to take care of business.
A man's writer and a man's manual; although his style is often irreverant and sometimes lofty, it always sweeps you along and keeps you turning those pages, asking for more of the same.
As Kerouac said, “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
No matter, the road IS life.
No matter, the road IS life.
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