FULL REVIEW: On The Road (Jack Kerouac, 1957, 254 pages)

                                
As I embarked on ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac, I must declare that I had high expectations and reservations.  How to describe the reputation of Kerouac as the voice of his generation, the Beat Generation, post WWII of the 1950’s era?  The language of his novel is dated by recognizable with phrases like ‘gone daddy’ and ‘cool cat.’  However the spirit of experimentation (sex, drugs, & jazz music), and that yearning to get on the road no matter where it leads, is familiar one. The novel has a compelling ‘hero,” the struggling writer, with no money, living with his aunt, desperate to experience all that life has to offer. And the prose is magnificent.

What surprised me though were the touching descriptions of passionate relationships within the novel, namely Dean Moriarty, and his initial love interest Terry.  And underneath the endless need to get ‘on the road’ is a deep search for meaning and revelation in life, in short a search for God, in my opinion.  This theme of the ‘Seeker embarking on a journey of self-discovery’ is one we have encountered in other works of Great Literature, namely Gilgamesh (20000 BC), Odysseus (800 BC), Dante (1308), and even K from the ‘Castle’ (1926).

  

Novel Background, Structure & Themes

Jack Kerouac finished writing the largely autobiographical ‘On the Road’ novel in 1951, but it was not published until 1957 by Viking Press. It originally met with mixed reviews due to the subject matter and depiction of Dean (mad eccentric or smart free spirit?).  The novel as consistently gained popularity to new generations concerned with the same themes implied the novel.  Recently it was recognized by Modern Library and Time magazine as one of the best 100 English-language novels of the 20^th century.

The novel contains five Parts (consisting of 14, 11, 11, 4 & 1 chapters respectively), many which describe specific road trips with ‘Sal Paradise,’ Jack’s alter-ego, and ‘Dean Moriarty,’ or Neal Cassady in reality, his high-spirited carefree friend who acts as a catalyst for their road trips.  The novel can be mistaken on the surface a simple buddy road trip story that Hollywood seems to churn out every year.  In addition to the aforementioned sex, drugs, & jazz music, the richness of the novel lies in the honest exploration on the nature of friendship, God’s existence, death, and the absolute joy of being alive and present in the moment.  Pretty heady stuff! 

The Nature of Friendship between Sal and Dean

The novel opens and ends with a line about Dean, and can be on the surface seen as the perfect buddy road trip story.  However with each trip, the main characters change (Jack for better, Dean for worse) and this has an effect on their relationship.  At the beginning, it is Sal who desperately depends on Dean to feel alive and latches on to his wild treks across the US:

 “I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up…With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road.” (Part One, Ch. 1 opening paragraph) 

“But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because 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, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" (Part One, Ch. 1)  NOTE:  This quote was inspiration for Kate Perry’s popular ‘Firework’ song.

By the end of the novel, Sal has settled down with his new girlfriend Laura, and it is Dean who now needs the comfort and stability of his old friend to maintain his sanity and as a respite from his complicated life:

“So Dean couldn't ride uptown with us and the only thing I could do was sit in the back of the Cadillac and wave at him. The bookie at the wheel also wanted nothing to do with Dean. Dean, ragged in a moth-eaten overcoat he brought specially for the freezing temperatures of the East, walked off alone, and the last I saw of him he rounded the corner of Seventh Avenue, eyes on the street ahead, and bent to it again. Poor little Laura, my baby, to whom I'd told everything about Dean, began almost to cry.

"Oh, we shouldn't let him go like this. What'll we do?" Old Dean's gone, I thought, and out loud I said, "He'll be all right." And off we went to the sad and disinclined concert for which I had no stomach whatever and all the time I was thinking of Dean and how he got back on the train and rode over three thousand miles over that awful land and never knew why he had come anyway, except to see me.” (Part Five, third and second last paragraphs)

This is a complicated relationship, but how many of us haven’t in our lives gravitated towards that exciting and wildly free spirit, recognizing that to continue down that path could lead to madness?  We all have met our personal Dean Moriartys and we realize we need to ‘grow up’ and be ‘responsible’ but deep down secretly mourn the passing of that brilliantly burning bright phase of our lives!

The Spirit of being ‘On the Road’

Whenever Sal begins to feel restless, trapped or lonely, he heads on the road, either towards friends or along with them towards a sometimes not very clear destination.  The point is just to get on the move:

“It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning of our journey. "Whooee!" yelled Dean. "Here we go!" And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; he was back in his element, everybody could see that. We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move. And we moved!”  (Part Two, Ch. 6)

One of my favorite descriptions is the joyful moment of the experience of new, unexplored territory, in this case Mexico in the novel:

“I couldn't imagine this trip. It was the most fabulous of all. It was no longer east-west, but magic south. We saw a vision of the entire Western Hemisphere rockribbing clear down to Tierra del Fuego and us flying down the curve of the world into other tropics and otherworlds. "Man, this will finally take us to IT!" said Dean with definite faith. He tapped my arm. "Just wait and see. Hoo! Whee"” (Part Four, Ch. 3)

“Behind us lay the whole of America and everything Dean and I had previously known: about life, and life on the road. We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic.” (Part Four, Ch. 5)

“Everybody's cool, everybody looks at you with such straight brown eyes and they don't say anything, just look, and in that look all of the human qualities are soft and subdued and still there. Dig all the foolish stories you read about Mexico and the sleeping gringo and all that crap)-and crap about greasers and so on-and all it is, people here are straight and kind and don't put down any bull. I'm so amazed by this.” (Part Four, Ch. 5)  ***CLICK Here for Full Passage of First Impressions of Mexico***

My Personal ‘Dean Moriarty’

Like all great literature, ‘On the Road’ made me reflect on my life, and it led me to an unexpected place.  That place was across-the-US border shopping trip in 1989 with my soon-to be wife Guylaine, my sister Enza, my cousin Rita and her younger sister Lidia.  

Lidia, to me, was my personal Dean Moriarty.  She had a tremendously free spirit and sense of adventure, in short, the life of the party!  After a full day of shopping for clothing and suitcases for her endless trips abroad, we all spent the night at a local disco.  Lidia had a little too much to drink and did a lot of dancing, and we had to carry her back to our hotel room where she promptly vomited up her Tequilas and Margaritas.  She fell asleep instantly on her bed with her clothes and shoes still on.  The next morning she was good to go, despite being chastised by her common-sense older sister; “Was it worth it to spend all that money on booze, if you can’t keep it down?” 

I never forget that moment.  Secretly we all wished we could be a little more like Lidia.  She had this constant drive to make the most out of life every moment she could.  Some would say that she was exhausting to keep up with.  Like Dean Moriarty.

Lidia Minicucci passed away suddenly in her sleep years later in 1998 of an apparent heart attack at the age of 32 after returning from yet another adventure, this time Aruba.  She lived her life as though she has needed to suck every moment from it.  This lesson has not been lost on us.  I now try to live my life after her example.

What triggered this bittersweet memory from reading ‘On the Road?’  It was the emotional ending, as Sal comes to realize with regret that Dean has exited from his life:

“I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”  (Part Five, ending line).

For me, the ending that came instantly to my mind was the following;

I think of Lidia Minicucci, I think of the trip she planned to visit us in Turkey we never realized, I think of Lidia Minicucci.




Rating:  10/10.