abdo, you obviously didn't read my whole post carefully. i liked most of "On the Road;" it was very moving.
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abdo, you obviously didn't read my whole post carefully. i liked most of "On the Road;" it was very moving.
What's obvious now? Did I mention On the Road in that post once, ever?
Uhh read my post, drug use is not very admirable. I bascially thought that in the late 40's they didn't see drugs as the danger they are now and were stupid for trying to "expand" their minds.
Hm...reread my post. I prefaced it with "Dakota." It wasn't directed at anything you wrote, Comrade. Ok? And I like reading comments by people who enjoyed the book besides moi. Though I totally understand people who don't - it took me years to pick it up again.
Oh I worded my post wrong, I know you weren't commenting about my post, I just wanted someone to respond to it. I was stating my general opinion about drug use in the novel. I'm new here so I guess I should be more careful.
:) Didn't realize you were asking for feedback/commenting further. Had just figured I wasn't clear. I should read more carefully :).
Interesting about beat writers. I was never exposed to any until I took a small publishing class. Their stuff made me realize I'd missed a lot re: modern poetry. Though as far as jazz goes, I think it's so varied - like you have the fat, smooth sounds of trumpets and saxaphones, or the more phrenetic fast paced stuff. I like how it's so individual, but only like the slower stuff personally. Not as far as beat literature goes - this in reference to music. I really liked how the varied tempos lived in the book.
Well I'm into bop basically, Miles Davis and John Coltrane stuff. I don't know if I listen to hard bop or not but I do like my jazz fast paced and lively. Theres also avant garde jazz which is really eccletic but I haven't gotten into it as much.
I listened to Coltrane when I was little, falling asleep. Will have to find out the name of the album. It was/is blue and beautiful, had "My Favorite Things" on it. (Maybe? that's the title.) He was on the cover facing his right. Never payed attention to the names of the other songs, just knew that one from the movie. Wish I had...
...have to backtrack on not liking fast-paced stuff. Saw one guy on the sax - a friend of a friend's. Had never seen fingers literally fly before that. I was just stunned. :)
I wish I had that kind of connection with music when I was younger, my taste for jazz is hardly a year old. Theres a cafe downtown that has a jazz blues jam every week and I listened and asked the musicians about what jazz they liked. I do like the slower stuff, "So What" by Miles Davis is a great song and so is Dave Brubeck's "Foggy Day".
Used to think of Jazz as "wrong note" music. Strangely though, the older I get the more I dig it. (to borrow a verb from Moriarty) Coltrane's "Blue Train" seems to keep finding its way into my CD player.
I know I'm joining this fight late, and its been quite a few years since I've read "On the Road," but I have to admit my initial impression of that text was much the same as Faye's. Here's the wierd part though. "On the Road" is one of those rare books that I have continued to think about with surpizing frequency since reading it.
I followed up "On the Road" with Tom Wolfe's "Electric Coolaid Acid Test." A difficult but interesting piece of literature for me. I've never in my life done a drug stronger than Advil (and supposedly neither has Wolfe) but there's a description of an acid trip in that book that made me think I had. Thought it best not to drive a car for a while after that chapter.
Then I listened to a bunch of Grateful Dead records -- but that's another story.
Hehe, well I was turned off by the drug use in On the Road, I was thinking about reading The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test but if its one long trip I'm not so sure. Then theres Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I've seen the movie and I'm not sure how easy to read such a book could be.
I've never read "Fear and Loathing..." either but it is on the list. Its just not very high on the list. It was primarily the style that made "Electric Coolaid Acid Test" interesting for me. Took me about a hundred pages to tune-in, but once I had, I was bouncing along in the magic bus with everyone else. The other interesting element in the book was just purely the history - the recording of the event by Wolfe. Fascinating.
That being said, I'll never reread "Electric Coolaid." I will however reread "On the Road." I think it was Faye earlier in this string who wrote that the book may speak to her when she's fifty (bad paraphase I know - Lo siento mucho Faye.) Well, that made me sort of unofficially decide to revisit Jack Kerouac's book on its fiftieth anniversary just to see if it had changed for me. Think that's next year.
Between now and then I plan to travel the other direction and read "Augie March" Has anybody been there?
Cheerio!
If I recall correctly, isn't Burroughs' Naked Lunch a big weird, zany, psychedelic drug novel?
I sure remember thinking it was one hell of a drug feast.
Big weird, zany, psychedelic, and metaphoric.
Or was it metamorphic?
Ahhh the sixties.
Born too late.
Tragic.
-Tootles
I just read "Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas, and if drug use turns you off, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK! All it is is drugs. There is VERY little plot other than what these two guys are thinking on this crazy drug binge. That being said, I loved it. I thought it was a great book.
heh crazy drug binge. Is Mr. Thompson dead now? I'm very antidrug straightedge so while I'll read about it I won't ever condone it. I guess I admire the achievement of being able to express the farout effects of drugs to someone who is tuned out.
I don't know what Thompson is doing now. With the amount of drugs he does, I'd be surprised if he's still around, but than again so is Keith Richards.
Conventional weapons cannot kill Keith Richards.
(plagiarized that from a bad movie I saw a while back)
As far as I know Thompson is still alive although not necessarily all that well. Saw him in an interview on public television last year after the release of his latest book, "Kingdom of Fear." He did not look good.
He's probably in his 60s by now. Most people who took drugs like that would be dead by now so he should consider himself lucky. Actually the protagonists of On the Road, Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac died in the mid and late sixties, Jack from alcoholism and Neal I'm not sure of.
I just finished this book last night and after reading this post I searched the internet to find out more about the Beat Generation. The book makes more sense after I found out a little more about this group of people. I respect the book because it gave insight into a different time and place, but I'm finding I don't really like the book because I don't really like any of the characters in the book. None of them seemed to have any qualities to make me want to know more about them or care what happens to them.
Dean Moriarty was the one I loved. Even if I had hated the rest of the book (which I didn't) it would have been worth it for Dean.
What I liked most about this book is that it was about people looking for a way out and none of them really found it. Drugs are a temporary fix that kill you in the end...but what other options are there? What other ways are there to escape from society and yourself? Today people are facing the same problems that Dean and crew were facing, and we still have found no better solutions. The most interesting, enlightened people are almost always drug addicts or "freaks" in some other way. My question for all of you is what other option did the characters of OTR have? Suits, ties, respectable jobs, middle-class morals, 2.5 children? No wonder they chose drugs.
Also, I would like all of you to join the campaign to bring back "dig". I have so far unsuccessfully attempted to start the trend, but I still have faith that it can be done!;)
Not sure I know what you mean by "dig".
Duuude, I can dig it. It never left my vocabulary. If you manage to bring it back, I'll be back in touch. I'm diggin' that.
Can ya' dig? man
I dig it that you are all about bringing dig back. Well, I have to go dig my biochem final (proper usage?). Bye!
people here at my school say 'dig' and 'diggin'' All the time. Guess thats why I wasn't sure what you meant by "bringing 'dig' back".
I think that's my problem with the book, I just don't understand the concept of having to "escape yourself", what does that mean?
*appears out of the blue* (:D Planning to read this book, so I'm getting some education here.)
Papaya, if you don't know why someone would want to escape themself, I believe you're far luckier than most. However, the theory that one *must* escape himself via chemical means to truly understand the world, I don't believe is justified. I've listened to some of my Kerouac/Thompson-worshipping friends yack on and on about it, and they're almost fried by now -- far from enlightened. Gaining another perspective is important for one's development, but drugs are a poor substitute for meditation and introspection. Recreational only, I say.
*fades into the shadows*
Someone may have already written this but I think it’s important to put this story in the context of the times. That generation, or rather that small slice of people who were just barely too young to have fought in WWII, were indeed a lost generation. The servicemen who were lucky enough to have survived the war returned to thankful nation and had taken all of the jobs and had the respect of the rest of the population. Those who didn’t serve had difficulty finding work, and had difficulty “defining themselves,” and were truly set adrift. I personally think that this is what text portrays so beautifully. The book had resonance then and it continues to speak to people today.
I'm going to start researching into the beat generation-sounds interesting. Anyone have anything to tell me? I still think about On the Road, and I STILL feel like hopping a plane to Alaska, there's that immortal sense of 'I wish I could live my life however.... go anywhere, do anything, just on the spur of the moment' Hey, I've got a fun idea! let's drive to mexico! sort of thing.
Calvin:' I'm going to hitch a ride to Africa'
Hobbes:' Africa's another continent., You can't drive there'
Calvin:' life is full of possiblities. Precluded possibilities.'
Neal Cassady sounds fascinating.
I did a little research also, it was an interesting time. I found a great website: http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/
I've also started reading Naked Lunch and a little Allen Ginsburg although I have to admit I've never really gotten into poetry.
I have started reading (read about 30 pages) Jack Kerouac's On The Road as it is one of the books in BBC's 100 Big Reads. I had heard/read such positive things about this book that I could not help being disappointed. Although it is an 'easy' to read book and I am not bored while reading it, I am still not getting that 'tingly feeling' either. Is it me? Does one need to be familiar with the American culture to appreciate this book? Or feel a connection with the beat generation? I hardly give up on books so I will carry on reading but I sincerely hope to find 'something' more in later pages.
Exactly! how i felt first reading it!! i've no connection to the beat generation, it was a gift from my very beloved brother, and i tried, tried, and tried to appreciate it.
well, 6 years later, i loved it. no idea why. 34 is not that much different from 28, but the book spoke to me. go figure. it called to a sense of loss, of wide open spaces that i didn't know i missed, the cold nights in the middle of
what it was was the sense that life could snowball into nothing with or without you, and that could mean something, and hedonism and music and sex could take over and at the end one edgy man could shake you and say "This, This was what you have to see, this is what i meant by living"
and that is why the last line made me cry.
i tried reading it and could not get into it.
completely agree with you sche, i read it when i was 16 and was soooooooooooo bored by it. my dad and my friend are the only ones i know who have also read it and they both think that it is rubbish and just typing. apparenly kerouac wrote it on several rolls of wallpaper strapped into his typewriter and typed it in 3 sittings while doped to the gills. frankly it reads that way. boring, nothing prose. bad overrated book just like naked lunch bu william burroughs and most stuff by the beats (with the exception of junky by william burroughs and charles bukowski's work)
:banana:
I think this is a link to the last discussion of On the road:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ead.php?t=2010
I read the book and reading the posts it made me more interested in finding out more about the beat generation, but I still say the book wasn't all that great.
I have yet to read Keruoac's On The Road, but I intend to, with time, having heard both extremes of the book being "truly amazing" or "absolutely horrible." I have heard of many ideas by Jack Keruoac and especially Allen Ginsberg, his fellow beat poet, relating much to Buddhist thought, first bringing into fame Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible - an excellent book worth reading for anyone interested in spirituality.
Having confidentally felt overly-indulged with beat poetry by Jack Keruoac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Charles Bukowski, I still hope to read On The Road with high expectations, and will confer with this thread.
Thanks, Scher! :)
Love a lot of the beat ethos - and I think 'On the Road' is probably better if you're 'that way on', but never really rated much else by Kerouac. It is years since I read Kerouac though - perhaps better at acertain age? I used to have a CD of some of his stuff being read over Jazz and that was great - can't remember what it was called though. Bukowski's poetry is sublime - traet yourself to a volume and throw in a copy of 'Ham on Rye' to get aquainted with the man.
as i said in the old thread if you go look at it.... i hated it, It bored me to death. I read it all hoping that it was going to improve, and it never did. And now all i remmeber is this going from side to side of the USA millions of times for no apparent reason, and ome drugs here and there... and a horrible feeling of boredom.
On the Road is descriptive of the beats and their time. It has no great literary merit in itself. It was written in the hopes that Herouac could make some money from it. There are a few sections that are pretty good, but, if you don't have affection for the beats, you probably won't find it pleasant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
No one has ever written a book that accuratly conveyed the way that it feels to do long distance hitch-hiking, but Kerouac tried.