On the Road is a book by Jack Kerouac, published in 1957. About, well, being on the road. But really its much more than that. It's about the search for IT, whatever that may be; spiritual, musical, drugs, women, sex, drink, parties, friendship, solidarity, marriage, fame, fortune, success, traveling on the road looking for IT. Ultimately, they never find it, so it could be said that the story is about loss, not getting it, never finding it. Kerouac was part of the beat generation of writers, or as he phrased it 'beatific', meaning blissful rather than the traditional beat, worn down and looking up the definition. The novel is a roman a clef, meaning real-life events with real people overlaid with a facade of fiction. It should be noted that the main characters in the novel are; Sal is Jack Kerouac himself, Old Bull Lee is William S. Burroughs, Carlo Marx is Allen Ginsberg, and Dean Moriarty is Neal Cassady, all-important, influential writers of the beat generation. What a cast.
The writing of the book was taken from notes during a road trip in the 1940s. Later it was typed out in a continuous reel of paper for three weeks in April 1951. It was published by Viking Press in 1957. At the time of publication, the Nytimes hailed the book as a beautiful and most important utterance of the beats, with Kerouac being its chief avatar. But the reviews weren't all positive. One reviewer said the novel takes you on a long trip, ultimately leading to nowhere. The novel is generally regarded as one of those important English language novels.
Kerouac was inspired to write the novel because of his friend and fellow beat writer Neal Cassady. Cassady wrote a 10,000-word letter, which prompted Kerouac to write "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose," a writing treatise on style that reflected a musical, jazz sensibility of improvisation with little rewriting and editing.
The story is about a couple of carefree young friends who are somewhat literary that engage in road trips during a specific era of jazz history; the transition from Charlie Parker to Miles Davis, from early bop to straight-ahead jazz.
The influence of jazz music and blues is profound here. There are so many jazz musicians that are named here it's too many to recall in this short post. Being a jazz and blues musician myself, I see the utmost importance and care that Kerouac put into describing this specific era of time in America, and how important the music was to the people of his generation, to the beats. Some writers have said that On the Road contains some of the most important descriptions of jazz music ever. Interesting.
The jazz music also reflects the writing. The writing is done in a spontaneous prosaic. It's quite refreshing, considering that most of the novels I read are highly edited over and over again. Although the writing is sort of simple, because of the fact that it reads like a jazz song, it's very enjoyable to read as a musician. You can hear the swing beats in the writing, the sheets of sound if you will. But most importantly, it's fun. It isn't work to read this novel. It reads like a breeze, again, again, like sheets of sound of a tenor sax. Blowin', as they call it.
The characters of this story take pleasure in everything they do. Drinking, parties, women, sex, driving fast down the road, getting stranded with no money, doing stupid things. We aren't shocked by sex and drugs. They substitute family for male brotherhood and the ladder of success for freedom of the road, a new measure of male identity. It's about searching for something to hold on to; a larger truth which is never found. Some people may never find it. And our heroes in this book don't either. Broken dreams and failed plans. In retrospect, it could be seen as a gloomy, middle-aged disillusion. So in that regard, this book has completely lost the zeitgeist. The ethos of the book has been lost. Could it come back again? Who knows.
Kerouac described his writing as Impressionist, art through observation. Not the traditional rewriting and editing process, rather, the emotional spontaneity of the writing itself. There's a personal nature of the text that makes it come alive, makes it more realistic, casual diction and relaxed syntax that depicts the energy and emotion of the experiences.
All in all, I found this to be a good read. It's a good book for quarantine because you get a sense of fun and adventure even though we're all under lockdown because of COVID-19. I wouldn't want to have an adventure like the guys in this book for obvious reasons. Some of it is downright miserable, especially the parts being stranded in American cities with no cash and no car, hitchhiking. The zeitgeist for this kind of stuff is gone but it's still important for us to read and write about. The beats sure were some kind of generation.
