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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.
Now I remember, they were always running off to somewhere else. It did convey a type of restlessness. I like the book now more than when I first read it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Koa
I hold a ribald facination for the beat generation. Yes On the Road is hard to get through beucase your expectations are for something crazy and marvelous. What you get is a low key cross country car trip without any nightmares or fighting. Perhpas this puts some people off, but I still found the book of historical benefit and the characters interesting, for what they reveal about the generation. As a whole read the beat generations works on the beat generation, try tackling some of Ken Kesey's works or Tom Wolfe's (Acid Kool Aid Test --very observational). I found the later beat generation stuff to be more entertaining, but remember these are about travel and alot of travel is just getting someplace which can be boring.
I join to the side of those who didn't like it when they read it first time. I tried to read it only once, but didn't finish, because mostly I had to struggle on it:( BUT I really hope to read it some time later, and to appreciate it more than I did then. I think that there should be the right time for reading some books.
i think it is one of those books that you like at a certain age (mostly teens or twenties) and then beyond that you don't. i read an interview with john irving recently who said that he didn't like the beats at all anymore but when he was a young man he thought they were great. it's an age thing perhaps. still say they're a bunch of drug addicted losers :)
:banana:
That's why they are so facinating, how they got such a following when they didn't do anything but take a bunch of drugs. And alot of the stuff created isn't even that good, so why are they revered? That's partly why I read the book, I wanted to see what was going on.
I had a dog who read it once and really related to it. I think he was a teenager at the time, but it's hard to tell with dogs.
well i was 16 or so when i read it but my teenage imagination wasnt really impressed...at all...
Hmmm - think that 16 is maybe too young. For me, 'On the Road' is meant for that time when that existential life style (to a greater or lesser degree) is just in reach; the book heaves with possibilities! And if you bypass an existential 'period' then it's just too late.
True, many of them (Jack Keruoac, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Lawrence Ferlinghetti) had a great affinity for mind-altering substances, but I often feel impressed with what admirable minds have written while under the influence, both fiction and non-fiction. Most works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, O. Henry, Honoré de Balzac, and Rumi, among others, who, I would like to think, theoretically suffered for the sake of art, I cannot help but express the most immense gratitude; and I question whether their literature would have seemed the same without their afflictions.Quote:
Originally Posted by mister_noel_y2k
Even highly intelligent and enlightening non-fiction works, I have found, formed out of experiments with mind-altering substances - research done by Timothy Leary Ph.D., John Lilly M.D., Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, Sigmund Freud, Steven Pinker, and Oliver Sacks M.D.
Though I cannot 'advocate for the devil' entirely on the pros and cons of seeming a 'drug-addicted loser,' but in terms of literature, poetry, and scientific research, I feel that some good has appeared out of substance abuse.
I agree with everything you said there Mono, but wait....the time that you posted. IT WAS 4:20!!!
;) You missed your chance to congregate in the collective ritual of smoking the Mary Jane at that time of day!!!! Shame....