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The Accidental Book Review That Made Jack Kerouac Famous
- jasonkester 7y agoPublic Service Announcement: Read This Book. More specifically, read this book in one sitting, then immediately book a flight to Southeast Asia or South America or Africa where the world is still equipped to handle this sort of low budget wandering and filled with young people doing so. It can only make your life better.
- mirimir 7y agoI'm guessing that it must be On the Road. The Washington Post is sure as hell locked up tight.
- nathancahill 7y agohttps://outline.com/gwZqTe https://outline.com/gwZqTe
- mirimir 7y agoThanks. But ... > Something went wrong > We're sorry. This page failed to Outline. Maybe because I'm using Cloudfront DNS?
- joncrane 7y agoI got the same error and I don't use CF DNS.
- stevewillows 7y agoCheck Privacy Possum/Badger. The tracking headers are being blocked, which seems to break Outline.
- mirimir 7y agoNope, it wasn't that for me. It was Smart Referer. If I disable that, the Outline link opens fine. But not the Washington Post article, itself. But thanks :)
- stevewillows 7y agonice! For WaPO and all other paywalls, you can try either of these paywall bypassing extensions [1], but for me, I find that simply disabling scripts through uBlock Origin does the trick. [1] https://github.com/iamadamdev/ https://github.com/iamadamdev/
- wiredfool 7y agoMy favorite review of this book is: > That’s not writing, that’s typing. ( it was written in 2 weeks, on a typewriter, on a single roll of paper. ) (( kind of like a speed fueled nanowrimo attempt, but successful. ))
- cookie_monsta 7y agoCapote wasn't talking about this book in particular when he said that, he was talking about Kerouac's method of never rereading or editing something once he had typed it. I only mention that because it changes the meaning of the quote- it's not necessarily about quality, but it's very much about methodology
- barry-cotter 7y ago> On the Road is a terrible book about terrible people. Jack Kerouac and his terrible friends drive across the US about seven zillion times for no particular reason, getting in car accidents and stealing stuff and screwing women whom they promise to marry and then don’t. > But this is supposed to be okay, because they are visionaries. Their vision is to use the words “holy”, “ecstatic”, and “angelic” at least three times to describe every object between Toledo and Bakersfield. They don’t pass a barn, they pass a holy vision of a barn, a barn such as there must have been when the world was young, a barn whose angelic red and beatific white send them into mad ecstasies. They don’t almost hit a cow, they almost hit a holy primordial cow, the cow of all the earth, the cow whose dreamlike ecstatic mooing brings them to the brink of a rebirth such as no one has ever known. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/02/book-review-on-the-road/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/02/book-review-on-the-roa...
- nl 7y agoYes, it still outrages people now. Can you imagine how revolutionary it was in 1957?
- wolfhumble 7y agoI would assume the commenter's point was that the book has deep moral issues and shouldn't be used as some sort of travel poster for "book[ing] a flight to Southeast Asia or South America or Africa where the world is still equipped to handle this sort of low budget wandering". But I am not the commenter, and thus might be completely wrong . . . :-)
- kupiv 7y agoI agree that society is changing, but the basic foundations of perception are very difficult to change, so it’s quite clear why this can offend society even then and now :)
- Fricken 7y agoKerouac represented the counterculture back in 1957, and out to upset the squares, and welcoming to most anyone who rejected mainstream values. Now it's the left that holds the podium and deems what is and isn't acceptable, and it's the Alt-right who are out to own the libs, and consider and weirdo or outsider who rejects mainstream society to be an ally. The poles have flipped.
- a_imho 7y agoAm I only supposed to book the flight or board the plane as well? I'm all for making my life better but I'm not sure what would my family and employer say if I were to leave on a whim.
- toxicFork 7y agoLeaving on a whim without caring about what the employer or the family would say is the sort of expected behaviour
- a_imho 7y agoI can sympathize with the cape diem sentiment, and gp might have practiced what they preach, but safe to say getting fired and getting a divorce in quick succession is probably not for everyone including me. I'm undecided whether to complain about the extreme point of privilege it is speaking from, personally I never had that kind of disposable income / safety net so this could have been actionable for me, but it is possible I'm a minority in that regard.
- ulisesrmzroche 7y agoJack Kerouac was not privileged and lived in poverty most of his life. Safe to say you’re not very fun at parties.
- dvh 7y agoPaywalled, let's discuss paywalls then. Good or bad? Do people who post paywalled articles get commission?
- sundvor 7y agoIf you click the 'web' link then the article ought to be in the vicinity of the top; open the result in an incognito window and the referer should give you access.
- mirimir 7y agoNope. It flashes for a second, and then all I see is a blank page. I'm probably blocking some sort of snooping that it requires. But I can't be bothered to figure out what it might be. So WTF, it's dead to me now.
- 3xblah 7y agocurl https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-accidental-book-review-that-made-jack-kerouac-famous/2019/12/13/23e94230-04b3-11ea-b17d-8b867891d39d_story.html?outputType=amp |tr -cd '\11\12\15\40-\176' |sed 's/</\n</g' | sed -n '/./{/<p class=.font--body/,/<\/p>/p;}' > 1.htm firefox 1.htm If desired, substitute browser of choice for "firefox". Can leave Javascript enabled.
- pjc50 7y agoIf you're calling from the EU, this gets stuck in an endless loop of GDPR consent redirects.
- spurgu 7y agoWhat I did was: 1. Visit the link until it complains about adblocker 2. Disable JS for washingtonpost.com (using NoScript) If I block JS directly I just get a GDPR (almost) blank page.
- 3xblah 7y agoNothing in the filtered output that could cause a redirect. If HTTP 3xx redirect, maybe try using a cache URL instead, e.g., curl http://web.archive.org/web/20191214075242/https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-accidental-book-review-that-made-jack-kerouac-famous/2019/12/13/23e94230-04b3-11ea-b17d-8b867891d39d_story.html?outputType=amp |tr -cd '\11\12\15\40-\176' |sed 's/</\n</g' | sed -n '/./{/<p class=.font--body/,/<\/p>/p;}' > 1.htm firefox 1.htm
- sogen 7y agonice! any way to make it work in Lynx/Elinks?
- dredmorbius 7y agolynx will read direct from stdin. <command> | lynx --force-html -stdin
- 7y ago
- Japhy_Ryder 7y agoWhat an incredible little story - I didn't know this and I'm from Lowell, Mass., Kerouac's hometown. The imprint he left here is palpable - Lowell is now considered a culture/arts/music destination and there's even a park dedicated to Kerouac with granite pillars with his writing etched on them. Always good to see him mentioned on HN. (My username is the protagonist from one of his other works, The Dharma Bums.)
- georgecmu 7y agoNo paywall link: https://www.heraldnet.com/life/the-accidental-book-review-that-made-jack-kerouac-famous/ https://www.heraldnet.com/life/the-accidental-book-review-th...
- TomK32 7y agoKerouac influenced me a lot when I was 18/19 yrs old, though Thoreau did push me even more on the path I chose. And that as a teen living in Bavaria! First I read from Kerouac was Book of Dreams, a bit ironic because I can never remember the dreams I have. A quick listen to Jack himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jej5d2kYjuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jej5d2kYjuQ I actually put that track onto the sampler that our class made when we finished school. Couldn't care less how my classmates reacted to that after lots of music :D Also have a listen into that first Kerouac conference. https://archive.org/details/On_the_road__The_Jack_Kerouac_conference_82P248 https://archive.org/details/On_the_road__The_Jack_Kerouac_co...
- TomK32 7y agooh, and one more tip: Buckley, Kerouac, Sanders and Yablonsky discussing the so-called "Hippies".
- grantuna 7y agoDharma Bums > On The Road IMHO