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When you read On the Road, at first you're a little judgmental towards the characters. But as the story progresses, you are envious of their carelessness, their crazy and wild abandon, their desire to live even when they don't know what they live for. You don't read it for the plot, but you read it for its moments, its vigorous, bright and mesmerising moments, mornings eating apple-pie with ice-cream, dirty streets in an alcohol frenzy, a young man on the top of a mountain with the world at his feet, a mexican brothel shaking by the sounds of mambo, cold nights drinking scotch under a crystal clear sky. In the end, it all comes to one thing: we are the sum of the people we meet. Some of them are destined to change us, draw us to them like moths to the flame. Other pass by like fleeting stars, or constitute a constant and reassuring presence. But all of them, without exception, are pieces of the puzzle of our existence. As TIME’s then explained, the plot was an opportunity for Kerouac to expound upon a new set of moral guidelines for young Americans: I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged and like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was "Wow!" (P. 37) Bignell, Paul (29 July 2007). " On the Road (uncensored). Discovered: Kerouac "cuts" ". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007 . Retrieved 2007-08-02. Viking Press released a slightly edited version of the original manuscript, titled On the Road: The Original Scroll (August 16, 2007), corresponding with the 50th anniversary of original publication. This version has been transcribed and edited by English academic and novelist Howard Cunnell. As well as containing material that was excised from the original draft, due to its explicit nature, the scroll version also uses the real names of the protagonists, so Dean Moriarty becomes Neal Cassady and Carlo Marx becomes Allen Ginsberg, etc. [11]
a b Holmes, John Clellon (November 19, 1952). "This is the Beat Generation". The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Look at Sal talking about a woman as if she were a breed of cat he wanted to rescue from the animal shelter. Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. A thriving mill town in the mid-19th century, Lowell had become, by the time of Kerouac's birth, a down-and-out burg where unemployment and heavy drinking prevailed. Kerouac's parents, Leo and Gabrielle, were immigrants from Quebec, Canada; Kerouac learned to speak French at home before he learned English at school. Leo owned his own print shop, Spotlight Print, in downtown Lowell, and Gabrielle, known to her children as Memere, was a homemaker. Kerouac later described the family's home life: "My father comes home from his printing shop and undoes his tie and removes [his] 1920s vest, and sits himself down at hamburger and boiled potatoes and bread and butter, and with the kiddies and the good wife." There is also a lot of jazz influence in the writing. Several times the writing comes to a stop for an onomatopoedic side trip to a jazz club. This was especially interesting as I was listening to the audio. Yes! It has all of the food groups - especially if you have it with ice cream." He paused. "Except pie isn’t as filling as you would think it would be, so we had to drink a lot of beer to make up for that. And we ate a lot of multi-vitamins because we felt terrible. We would stop and camp out by the road, eating pie and drinking beer with multi-vitamins.
In the six years that passed between the composition and publication of On the Road, Kerouac traveled extensively, experimented with Buddhism and wrote many novels that went unpublished at the time. His next published novel, The Dharma Bums (1958), described Kerouac's clumsy steps toward spiritual enlightenment on a mountain climb with friend Gary Snyder, a Zen poet. Dharma was followed that same year by the novel The Subterraneans, and in 1959, Kerouac published three novels: Dr. Sax, Mexico City Blues and Maggie Cassidy. Mr. ALLEN GINSBERG (Poet): When I went to Kerouac's house once, and I'd been revising my poem, and he said, stop revising. This novel bears out a recent remark by Truman Capote on the Beat Generation writers, “It is not writing. It simply is not writing. It is, it is only typing.” What more can one say? The New York Times hailed the book's appearance as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest, and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac, himself, named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is." [1] In 1998, the Modern Library ranked On the Road 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. [2] Production and publication [ edit ] More than four decades after his death, Kerouac continues to capture the imagination of wayward and rebellious youth. One of the most enduring American novels of all time, On the Road appears on virtually every list of the 100 greatest American novels. Kerouac's words, spoken through the narrator Sal Paradise, continue to inspire today's youth with the power and clarity with which they inspired the youth of his own time: "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 like fabulous yellow roman candles."
Please forgive my review. It is early morning and I have just woken up with a sore head, an empty bed and a full bladder. I just learnt that Sam and Dean from Supernatural were named after Sal and Dean, and I don't know what to believe in anymore. We got to my girlfriend’s house, and we looked like shit. We hadn’t shaved and we had the pie sweats. But, it made me an expert at pie.”
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By the time Kerouac and Burroughs met in 1944, Kerouac had already written a million words. More words came in the wake of Kerouac’s brief detainment in August 1944, when friend and fellow Beat Lucien Carr—who had introduced him to Burroughs and Ginsberg—confessed to having killed David Kammerer, a longtime admirer whose advances had gotten aggressive, in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Kerouac assisted Carr in disposing of Kammerer’s glasses and the knife used in the killing. When Carr eventually confessed to the police, Kerouac was arrested as a material witness. He was bailed out by Parker’s parents; at that time she was his girlfriend, and her parents insisted that the couple marry before he was released. Kerouac and Burroughs collaborated on a novelization of the events, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, soon after. It went unpublished until 2008. Leland, John (2007), Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), New York: Viking Press, ISBN 978-0-670-06325-3
I think this book, which launched Kerouac's career and gave him insta-fame, has to be seen as a product of its time. But Kerouac was still not done. After that spring frenzy, he would continue to revise and retype the original MS roll many times. In October 1951, he was still reworking it in the belief that his “wild form” of narrative had not captured his subject to his satisfaction. This became an alternative version, entitled Visions of Cody, in which Cassady became “Cody Pomeray”.I personally can't stand the characters. They cover up irresponsibility and real hurt to people in the guise of being artists. However, I do think there is more to this story. Kerouac's writing style has attracted the attention of critics. On the Road has been considered by Tim Hunt to be a transitional phase between the traditional narrative structure of The Town and the City (1951) and the "wild form" of his later books like Visions of Cody (1972). [26] Kerouac's own explanation of his style in "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" (1953) is that his writing is like the Impressionist painters who sought to create art through direct observation. Matt Theado feels he endeavored to present a raw version of truth which did not lend itself to the traditional process of revision and rewriting but rather the emotionally charged practice of the spontaneity he pursued. [27] Theado argues that the personal nature of the text helps foster a direct link between Kerouac and the reader; that his casual diction and very relaxed syntax was an intentional attempt to depict events as they happened and to convey all of the energy and emotion of the experiences. [27] Music in On the Road [ edit ] The pianist was only pounding the keys with spread-eagled fingers, chords, or at intervals when the great tenorman was drawing breath for another blast--Chinese chords, shuddering the piano in every timber, chink, and wire, boing!" (P. 197) I thought, and looked every, as I had looked everywhere in the little world below. And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent" (P. 79) An interesting thing that happened while listening to this is twice I thought "this is reminding me of Hemingway" and less than a minute later, Hemingway is mentioned. It really reminded me of The Sun Also Rises and Wkipedia mentions that Kerouac did intentionally use the style of that book for On The Road.
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