On The Road (by Jack Kerouac)
Like a giant frenetic poem. So much wild, manic energy, and such great fun to read. I also enjoyed reading up on the autobiographical elements of the novel--to see which characters represented Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac himself, and of course Neal Cassady.
I'm not really into the beats (in spite of the fact that two of them were my college professors) as a general rule, but I loved On The Road. It reminded me weirdly of Hemingway, although Kerouac didn't like Hemingway and his sentences are about three thousand times longer. But the spirit of it seemed very Hemingwayesque. It is to the Beat Generation what The Sun Also Rises is to the Lost Generation. Both awesome books, and very worth reading.
"We had come from Denver to Chicago via Ed Wall's Ranch, 1180 miles, in exactly seventeen hours, not counting the two hours in the ditch and three at the ranch and two with the police in Newton, Iowa, for a mean average of seventy miles per hour across the land, with one drive. Which is a kind of crazy record." (Page 237)
I'm not really into the beats (in spite of the fact that two of them were my college professors) as a general rule, but I loved On The Road. It reminded me weirdly of Hemingway, although Kerouac didn't like Hemingway and his sentences are about three thousand times longer. But the spirit of it seemed very Hemingwayesque. It is to the Beat Generation what The Sun Also Rises is to the Lost Generation. Both awesome books, and very worth reading.
"We had come from Denver to Chicago via Ed Wall's Ranch, 1180 miles, in exactly seventeen hours, not counting the two hours in the ditch and three at the ranch and two with the police in Newton, Iowa, for a mean average of seventy miles per hour across the land, with one drive. Which is a kind of crazy record." (Page 237)
posted by mo pie at 7:04 PM
2 Comments:
I'm glad you loved the book! I now feel justified in my own fangirl On the Road love. I really want to re-read The Sun Also Rises, since I just finished rereading A Moveable Feast. I discovered Hemingway and Kerouac at the same time, in early high school. They really do seem to go together naturally.
I'm presently listening to "On the Road" on CD during my commute and am enjoying it immensely -- with the added bonus of hearing it read by the deliciously velvety voice of one Matt Dillon. Mmmmm....
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