Jack Kerouac

[AbdoRinbo]

I read On the Road four years ago and fell madly in love with Kerouac (in a strictly platonic way ). For my birthday, my uncle sent me a copy of Vanity of Duluoz after I had talked with him casually about which authors made me laugh, which made me cry, and which left a totally different kind of mark on me (or, more precisely, which one). I can't say I have read anyone like Kerouac before, he is full of contradictions and uncouth edges . . . but he appeals to me in a way I can hardly describe. If I were banished to the moon, I would definitely bring Kerouac's collected works with me.

I haven't read Vanity of Duluoz yet, so any comments are sincerely welcomed.

[AbdoRinbo]

Am I the only Kerouac enthusiast on this board? What a devastation.

[Koa]

Well when I read On The Road I was still young and in a phase where I never gave up on a book and read it all even if I hated it... On The Road was really a hard task. I only have a memory of going through this 300 pages hoping that something happened in the story...but nothing ever did... Only going from San Francisco to New York or wherever it was then back again and then the other way... argh.

If it's so famous and loved there must be something beyond that boredom... but I really couldn't find it. Any clue to find it, incase I give it another try someday?

[AbdoRinbo]

If it's so famous and loved there must be something beyond that boredom... but I really couldn't find it. Any clue to find it, incase I give it another try someday?

You sound like my high school English teachers. Did you totally skip over the concluding part set in the impoverished, southern regions of Mexico? Ah-h-h . . . who could possibly find boredom in an episode like that? I guess the story is loose, but it's a story about travelers--it's not supposed to be 'grounded'. On the Road is the third best work of literature on my list.

[Rotty1021]

Currently reading On the Road and it is written beautifully, with a style that seems to have required no effort to put the words on the page. (I mean this in a good way).

[ihrocks]

"On the Road" is episodic...meaning there needn't be an overiding plot, merely a series of adventures. I'd love it all on its own for the flow and the language, but I have a special reason for loving it. It is, to my knowledge, the only piece of literature that comes anywhere near my backyard. I remember when I first read it and saw references to Arcadia and El Monte (tiny towns in Southern California)...I nearly tore the pages from the book to show people! "Look! Someone who was someone has heard of this place and actually been here!" It was truly remarkable to me back. In fact, it's still pretty remarkable to me.

ihrocks

[AbdoRinbo]

Kerouac wrote On the Road in (would you believe it?) two weeks.

[Rotty1021]

Kerouac wrote On the Road in (would you believe it?) two weeks.

Get out of here! That's amazing. I look up to people with such a skill.

[AbdoRinbo]

His life was a movement towards that one point: the purifying act of abandoning the past, abandoning everything, emptying out the closet and meditating on the hollow state of the soul.

[AbdoRinbo]

Check out the 'Pynchon' thread just below this one.

[sloegin]

I am currently re-reading On The Road. Kerouac makes me feel almost the same way as Hemingway, shooting myself, though not as much. Henry Miller's prose is the same style, he just pulls it off and makes me want to live. Not forgetting he did it 20 years earlier. Though I know people who feel antipodal to that and hate Miller while exalting Kerouac and Hemingway.

[ihrocks]

Sloegin,

I had never considered the similarities between Miller and Kerouac, but you are right, they're there. Personally, I didn't find Kerouac depressing, but I guess compared to Miller most writers would seem that way. Miller makes joyful noise with his writing, in most cases. I have read some of the work he did to "pay the bills" in his career. :oops: Now that is depressing!

ihrocks

[tree]

i like the beat generation, but i have read only the Burrougth´s Naked lunch
and i liked it much.

[den]

Burrough's `Junky' was crap, the histrionics self-indulgent pap. I use it to prop up one of my bookshelves now. :P

I read Kerouac's The Dharma Bums many times, and left my dogeared copy of On the Road in a Tecolutla, Mexico cantina. Art living life.

[AbdoRinbo]

Life mirroring art.