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> 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 re

> 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 ago
Yes, it still outrages people now. Can you imagine how revolutionary it was in 1957?
- wolfhumble 7y ago
  I 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 ago
  I 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 ago
  Kerouac 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.
  - nl 7y ago
    Alt-right who are out to own the libs and [are?] consider[ed] and [a?] weirdo or outsider? Yeah, all those dreadfully underprivilideged white college boys who want their racism, sexism and anti-sex stances to be acceptable again.
keiferski 7y ago
The author of Slate Star Codex is perhaps the exact opposite of Jack Kerouac, so it’s not particularly surprising he didn’t like the novel.
- jbc1 7y ago
  Authors response to a comment in the discussion below the article: “I’m betting that Scott went to university straight after school and then went straight into medicine after that. He might have benefited from a year off experiencing promiscuity, drug use and even petty crime. It worked for me.” I think you’re joking, but in case not – between my junior year of college and the time I started medical school I took two years off and several different trips, during which I (for example) crossed Great Britain entirely on foot, travelled to about thirty different countries, hiked the Himalayas and got lost and had to be rescued by Sherpas, learned to scuba dive amidst poorly explored weird undersea ruins, starred in a Mongolian-language music video, taught elementary school English in Japan, got arrested twice and spent a night in a foreign jail, biked across Italy, and did various other ill-advised things. When I say there’s nothing wrong with taking some time off in your early twenties to be a bit crazy and see the world, I’m speaking from experience. I swear I wasn’t always as boring as I am now, and if I ever decide to write my own version of “On The Road” it will be at least as interesting as Kerouac’s – as it is, my old blog is about fifty times more worth reading than this place. But it doesn’t include any carjackings. My point isn’t that you shouldn’t explore, it’s that you should do it without being a jerk and without fetishizing exploration as the be-all-and-end-all of life.
  - keiferski 7y ago
    I’m not sure what that answer is supposed to prove. Kerouac stood for things that made (and still make) the consumer bourgeois middle class tremble. The fact that the author lists his early-twenties experiences as some sort of “checklist before becoming a real adult©” illustrates exactly that he just doesn't get it - the Beats in general represent a sort of life that is alien to your average person today. It’s about a mindset and a different approach to life than the fundamentally consumeristic one that is taken for granted in 2019, where counterculture has more-or-less been entirely destroyed or co-opted by people selling stuff.
dawg- 7y ago
This is one way to read On The Road, I guess. I was infatuated with the book when I was 18 but later came to some similar conclusions about the whole premise of the book. But this review kind of assumes that Kerouac was stupid and incapable of thinking critically about himself or the subculture he was a part of. I can't help but believe that Kerouac must have had some misgivings about his lifestyle. Yes he writes about everything being angelic and awesome on the road. But the story also takes on a Sisyphean vibe as they continue to wander across the country over and over and over again. The characters are led back to the road again and again to constantly chase the next ecstatic revelation in hopes that they will find some meaning somewhere. It's like the harder they look for enlightenment, the further they get from it - a theme which coincidentally is very Zen and something I think Kerouac must have been conscious of since he was a pretty serious student of Zen buddhism. Reading the book as a self-critical, partial satire of the Beat lifestyle introduces a lot more nuance and helps to appreciate the counterculture while also realizing that they weren't so stupid as to not acknowledge the flaws in their own philosophy and lifestyle.
- abakker 7y ago
  A highly relevant read, to accompany “On the road” is “Hell’s Angels” by hunter s Thompson. I read them as a pair of books that examine both sides of that era. “fear and loathing in Las Vegas” pretty much closes the door on the Beat Generation, but, I think Hells Angels offers more insight into the times.

nl 7y ago

Yes, it still outrages people now. Can you imagine how revolutionary it was in 1957?

wolfhumble 7y ago
I 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 ago
I 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 ago
Kerouac 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.
- nl 7y ago
  Alt-right who are out to own the libs and [are?] consider[ed] and [a?] weirdo or outsider? Yeah, all those dreadfully underprivilideged white college boys who want their racism, sexism and anti-sex stances to be acceptable again.

keiferski 7y ago

The author of Slate Star Codex is perhaps the exact opposite of Jack Kerouac, so it’s not particularly surprising he didn’t like the novel.

jbc1 7y ago
Authors response to a comment in the discussion below the article: “I’m betting that Scott went to university straight after school and then went straight into medicine after that. He might have benefited from a year off experiencing promiscuity, drug use and even petty crime. It worked for me.” I think you’re joking, but in case not – between my junior year of college and the time I started medical school I took two years off and several different trips, during which I (for example) crossed Great Britain entirely on foot, travelled to about thirty different countries, hiked the Himalayas and got lost and had to be rescued by Sherpas, learned to scuba dive amidst poorly explored weird undersea ruins, starred in a Mongolian-language music video, taught elementary school English in Japan, got arrested twice and spent a night in a foreign jail, biked across Italy, and did various other ill-advised things. When I say there’s nothing wrong with taking some time off in your early twenties to be a bit crazy and see the world, I’m speaking from experience. I swear I wasn’t always as boring as I am now, and if I ever decide to write my own version of “On The Road” it will be at least as interesting as Kerouac’s – as it is, my old blog is about fifty times more worth reading than this place. But it doesn’t include any carjackings. My point isn’t that you shouldn’t explore, it’s that you should do it without being a jerk and without fetishizing exploration as the be-all-and-end-all of life.
- keiferski 7y ago
  I’m not sure what that answer is supposed to prove. Kerouac stood for things that made (and still make) the consumer bourgeois middle class tremble. The fact that the author lists his early-twenties experiences as some sort of “checklist before becoming a real adult©” illustrates exactly that he just doesn't get it - the Beats in general represent a sort of life that is alien to your average person today. It’s about a mindset and a different approach to life than the fundamentally consumeristic one that is taken for granted in 2019, where counterculture has more-or-less been entirely destroyed or co-opted by people selling stuff.

dawg- 7y ago

This is one way to read On The Road, I guess. I was infatuated with the book when I was 18 but later came to some similar conclusions about the whole premise of the book. But this review kind of assumes that Kerouac was stupid and incapable of thinking critically about himself or the subculture he was a part of. I can't help but believe that Kerouac must have had some misgivings about his lifestyle. Yes he writes about everything being angelic and awesome on the road. But the story also takes on a Sisyphean vibe as they continue to wander across the country over and over and over again. The characters are led back to the road again and again to constantly chase the next ecstatic revelation in hopes that they will find some meaning somewhere. It's like the harder they look for enlightenment, the further they get from it - a theme which coincidentally is very Zen and something I think Kerouac must have been conscious of since he was a pretty serious student of Zen buddhism. Reading the book as a self-critical, partial satire of the Beat lifestyle introduces a lot more nuance and helps to appreciate the counterculture while also realizing that they weren't so stupid as to not acknowledge the flaws in their own philosophy and lifestyle.

abakker 7y ago
A highly relevant read, to accompany “On the road” is “Hell’s Angels” by hunter s Thompson. I read them as a pair of books that examine both sides of that era. “fear and loathing in Las Vegas” pretty much closes the door on the Beat Generation, but, I think Hells Angels offers more insight into the times.