On the Road (1957)

On the Road left me reeling… what an exhilarating read (or should I say ride?). It is audacious, inspiring and confusing. Life in it is about letting go, of breaking the rules, ignoring convention, and embracing creativity and spontaneity. The sex, drugs and jazz are no footnotes either.

Jean-Louise ‘Jack’ Kerouac’s influential novel captures the post-World War II times of the cultural revolution and the American writers who wrote about it and shaped its character; in a word (or two) the Beat Generation. On the Road is a testament to the music, the desire for intellectual debate, the experiments with drugs and the love of self-expression that characterised these writers and their followers.

The main character Salvatore ‘Sal’ Paradise is literally on the road, with his friend Dean Moriarty. The novel is built around several road trips that the two take across America and into Mexico. They travel with a myriad of characters: friends, hitchhikers, hangers on, travellers, children, and a variety of cars: a Hudson, a Plymouth and a 47’ Cadillac limousine.

The novel explores what they see and experience, the people they leave behind or pick up, the relationships they race through and the friendships they test. There’s something very unsettling about its characters who can’t stay still for a moment. Speed and risk become adrenalin thrills, and no one is keeping score.

Dean Moriarty – now there’s a character. He’s the friend you wish you have and the friend you wish you never have. He’s lovable and persuasive, but selfish and vulnerable. His faux philosophical ramblings are enough to drive you mad. He’s a beautiful human being that appreciates the small things in life, and sweats when the excitement proves too much.

Neal Cassady (L) and Jack Kerouac: The ties that bind

Dean is in search of a very elusive ‘IT,’ specifically to ‘dig IT.’ It’s telling that he can’t bring himself to explain this ‘IT.’ It’s a search for meaning, but a meaning to what? Life? The past? What matters? You are free to draw your conclusions. This lack of meaning can be very lonely. And that’s why it’s important to keep moving, from town to town, woman to woman and trip to trip.

The women in the novel are not part of any of these adventures, especially the ones smitten about Dean. Wives and children litter his personal landscape, and he uses them for emotional strength. These women come across as long suffering nurturers ready to fulfil random requests. Although they are not out and out victims, their protests are either ignored or are ineffective. It’s symbolic and disappointingly revealing.

The novel is very much a biographical take on Kerouac’s life. Dean is said to be based on Neal Cassady, his lifelong friend. Old Bull Lee is William S. Burroughs.  Carlo Marx is Allen Ginsberg. Galatea Dunkel is Helen Hinkle.

The 120-foot draft (Photograph: AP, Source: guardian.co.uk)

On the Road is full of joy with a somewhat deliberately infused innocence. It’s not that the characters have no awareness of what they are doing; it’s more that they have no compunctions. They live by no codes and are not answerable to anyone. You envy this carefree life and the energy that sustains it.

The prose makes you feel this speed. I found myself tumbling over the words and phrases in an attempt to keep the pace – to read as fast as they were whizzing down dusty streets. Kerouac called this ‘spontaneous prose’ and there’s an interesting story to this. He typed the first draft on a 120-foot long ‘scroll’ – single spaced, no margins, no paragraph breaks. More than 50 years on, the novel still resonates with a wild energy that won’t stop for any paragraph breaks. And that’s as it should be.

As Sal says,

“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centrelight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

How can you not love the mad ones?

(Buy the book: Amazon, Book depository)