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Maybe it's because I never had my On the Road phase, but this review on Kerouac I always found really strong: > On the Road is a terrible book about terrible p
by huhkerrf 4mo ago
Maybe it's because I never had my On the Road phase, but this review on Kerouac I always found really strong:
> 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.
> Jack Kerouac’s relationship with Dean can best be described as “enabler”. He rarely commits any great misdeeds himself. He’s just along for the ride [usually literally, generally in flagrant contravention of all applicable traffic laws] with Dean, watching him destroy people’s lives, doing nothing about it, and then going into rhapsodies about how free-spirited and unencumbered and holy and mad and visionary it all is.
https://readscottalexander.com/posts/ssc-book-review-on-the-road https://readscottalexander.com/posts/ssc-book-review-on-the-...
- cassepipe 4mo agoI have had my on the road phase when I was around 18 when I read the book but I did not vibe at all with it. I found all the characters highly unlikeable and couldn't help to think that I much better friends, even my wildest ones. But I wasn't wild enough I guess because I actually managed to finish the book, like a well behaved schoolboy.
- cassepipe 4mo agoAlso it's terribly boring
- keiferski 4mo agoIt must be so exhausting to go through life only enjoying things that match one’s up-to-the-minute current moral views. I guess all biographies of influential people are basically out, as being successful in 1000BC or 1500AD required one to do things considered unethical today. It feels a bit like religious fundamentalism with a different veneer.
- saagarjha 4mo agoOk but you do realize that he was alive in the 1900s, not 1000 BC.
- keiferski 4mo agoThe moral views of the average person circa 1930 are very different from one today. But I read old books for their interesting stories, viewpoints on life, literary quality, etc. – not to tut-tut someone for having different moral views than me, a hundred years later. So it doesn't bother me. Like I said, I really cannot understand the mindset of someone that reads a book from another era/civilization and focuses on critiquing the author's ethics. Just feels like such a limited way to interact with the world.
- saagarjha 4mo agoPlease point to the things being described in that comment and explain what the average person in 1930 would have felt about them.
- breezybottom 4mo agoI don't see it. The 1930s weren't that long ago, there are still people alive who lived through them. If you were talking about ancient Egypt, you might have a point.
- keiferski 4mo agoThe 1930s had radically different opinions on race, gender, religion, and a host of other things as compared to today.
- breezybottom 4mo agoDefine "radical"
- 4mo ago
- thelarrys 4mo agoThe deep pockmarks in Scott Alexander's hands left from so strongly clutching his pearls will take an eternity to de-dimple.
- cassepipe 4mo agoTIL I learned that not liking a-holes and to find the story their repititive adventures boring is pearl-clutching
- thelarrys 4mo agono, just expressing outrage over the characters' values in a On the Road is. Judging some beat literature as if it had promised sober insight, ethical maturity, and durable philosophical yield is like taking a classic of rock music (e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody) and saying "this makes no fucking sense, its flamboyant garbage, no structural rigor whatsoever - go listen to beethoven." if you read on the road thiking you're going to get carefully distilled philosophical and moral clarity, you're in the wrong Wendy's sir.
- cassepipe 4mo agoWhere you see outrage, I see frustration from forcing oneself to read something everyone told you was a must-read > carefully distilled philosophical and moral clarity I wasn't looking for moral clarity, I was looking for something interesting to read about the world they live in, some insight From the review posted above: "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."
- thelarrys 4mo ago
- pjc50 4mo agoAnd in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, they don't even manage to do any motorcycle maintenance! (I think people have misunderstood the appeal of the book, probably because the psychological conditions of the mid-20th century are unrecognizable. It is significant that the book is from 1957, a whole decade before Easy Rider and the general transition period centered on 1968)
- breezybottom 4mo agoYears don't have psychological conditions, people do.
- everdrive 4mo agoFor someone who has read neither, could you expand on this? What makes this book significant from a 1950s-1960s perspective? Is it worth reading today for its own merit outside the historical relevance?
- tclancy 4mo agoThey most certainly do motorcycle maintenance! I remember asking my dad what the hell points used to be on engines. The first few chapters contain a lot of talk about motorcycle maintenance. You’re not going to learn to change out a carb or anything but it’s there.
- bshepard 4mo agoThis is untrue, the book is filled with incidents of motorcycle maintenance. Perhaps you have not read it? The second chapter centers around a complex issue involving a piston seizure: "“I remove a glove with my teeth, reach down and feel the aluminum side cover of the engine. The temperature is fine. Too warm to leave my hand there, not so hot I get a burn. Nothing wrong there. On an air-cooled engine like this, extreme overheating can cause a “seizure.” This machine has had one-in fact, three of them. I check it from time to time the same way I would check a patient who has had a heart attack, even though it seems cured.”
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- bsenftner 4mo agoAround the same time I first read On The Road, my wiser than should be possible mother said "Oh, you need to read this too" and it was "Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg", written by Carolyn Cassady. Rips the band aid right off of those sexist abuser of innocents, those utter assholes. They write great literature, and the fact that they expose their own terrible ethics bare, but surrounded by non-condemning language is the trick. They never hid their nature, but America never realized what they were praising, not really. Which is all so American!
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- tclancy 4mo agoThis New Yorker piece inspired me to finally pick up On the Road last night. I don think it’s a terrible book, but I would say the jury’s out on the people. I’m eighty or so pages in and waiting for the magic to happen. If it’s more of a tone poem, I’ll wind up tapping out because those books and movies are never my jam. Could be I just like On the Road: The Musical, book by Craig Finn, music by The Hold Steady. > generally in flagrant contravention of all applicable traffic laws Being up front, I cannot stand this author in the first place. The idea there were any applicable traffic laws in the Great Inbetween in 1950s America is stupid.
- jgalt212 4mo ago> screwing women whom they promise to marry and then don’t. It really is unfortunate that man's sex drive is above and beyond the level he can achieve without subterfuge (at best) and violence (at worst).
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- doginasuit 4mo agoI'm curious, do the people who love the book generally believe that the characters in the story are admirable? I remember a certain sick feeling, the same you get with any story that pulls you along to places you aren't sure you want to go. But at the same time I could relate to the "anything but this" spirit it held toward the culture at the time. I appreciated the mood and the restlessness of it, like watching the sunrise after a regrettable night out. It has been a long time and now I feel like I should revisit it to see if that still holds.
- everdrive 4mo agoI'm not very familiar with Kerouac, but I've at least heard people talk about it. It was far less impactful, but reading the Scott Alexander review, the very first thing that comes to mind is SLC Punk! Of course SLC Punk! makes its message pretty explicit, and by the end the main character learns that living so hedonistically was always selfish / immature / destructive / etc. When I was a kid, I was very sad for the last half of SLC Punk! Like so many stupid kids, I was sure that I was oppressed and my angry instincts had some sort of real defiance and valor to them. And of course, just like the movie, a bit of life experience and maturity revealed the lie. I rewatched the movie recently as an adult (~late 30s) it was a totally different experience. The end of the movie felt a bit like a mercy. (which I'm sure is what the director intended) I say this only because I've never heard people talk about Kerouac in this way, but I also think the last time I heard anyone talk about Kerouac was back in college; back when we could still lie to ourselves about the nature of (stupid, teenage) rebellion. Back when we had no inkling just how selfish or privileged we were.
- doginasuit 4mo agoI very much relate to the SLC Punk experience. The movie that came to mind for me as I was writing my comment was Dazed and Confused, it brings back that same feeling. One of the big questions I have now about Kerouac and On The Road is how much self-awareness he found. My understanding is that he was an essential part of the vanguard of American counter culture, a flawed prophet that can still be appreciated on some level.
- kamranjon 4mo agoI interestingly came to a pretty similar conclusion about Kerouac around the same time as this reviewer, and brought it up in my review of Henry Miller’s book on Big Sur (which I can highly recommend): https://kamranjon.com/writings/henry-miller-and-the-big-sur.html https://kamranjon.com/writings/henry-miller-and-the-big-sur....
- thom 4mo agoWas about to comment, anyone who finds themselves bouncing off Kerouac could do worse than read Miller. The latter is more like your first torrid love affair versus the former’s first giggling glimpse at a porno mag.