This book is so iconic and widely-discussed, that there’s probably not much I can add that hasn’t already been said. So perhaps I should just go with my own personal reactions.

Things I enjoyed:

  • Reading history in the making, part 1. Never far from the surface of the book is that it represented and promoted a real break in the culture of conformity that dominated American life at the time, and for that we owe it a debt of gratitude.

  • Reading history in the making, part 2. It is so strange to read the day-to-day details of life in America from that time period - they are mostly recognizable and yet completely foreign simultaneously. I can’t imagine anything so exotic as a travel bureau in operation today, and one can only imagine what Sal Paradise would have done with the Internet.

  • The language, part 1. The prose, apparently inspired by Hemingway, vacillates between a sort of plain-and-true recitation of simple facts, and an energetic, creative, emotive style that seems to burst through the surface from time to time, at particularly frenetic parts of the narrative. I rather enjoyed that wax-on, wax-off kind of approach, it was interesting.

  • The language, part 2. I just tremendously enjoyed pretty much everything Dean said, it was so fun to read such an intentionally unconventional style of speech and thought. (“It is imperative that we all dig this gone little hut for precisely six more minutes”, for example - not an actual quote, but a plausible one.) It reminds me a little of the considerably more unconventional speech style of A Clockwork Orange.

Things I didn’t enjoy:

  • Bigotry and misogyny. Available in tremendous quantities on both counts. To be sure, the racial attitudes and stereotypes that now appear shockingly dimwitted were probably very progressive at the time - which is not by way of excuse. And on top of that Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise are not particularly nice to the women in their lives, and it’s disheartening. The idea that women constrain male rebellion is hardly new or unique to this book, but it’s also a plainly wrong one, and on this count Kerouac could have done much better; the idea of a rebellious woman is not unique to our time.

  • The swallowing of Sal’s feelings. If you pay attention you’ll discover that Sal is basically a heartsick, terribly lonely person who is trying desperately to find his way in the world; but that story is buried under the avalanche of Dean’s personality, and I don’t know that it improves the story very much.

Some other things I noticed:

  • This book is basically a story of mental illness. I don’t know what psychiatry looked like back then, but if this story were written for contemporary times, we would all take a look at Dean Moriarty and guess he has manic depression, or the like. Which is odd, since I just finished another book (The Marriage Plot) which is very much about manic depression as well. It’s perhaps telling about our society that a book which so decisively broke the mold of conformity was so directly rooted in mental illness.

  • Collapsing. This phrase, or its derivative, must appear a dozen or so times in the book: “Everything was collapsing”. Meaning, whichever gang Sal was hanging around with was no longer getting along as well as it once had; and that consequently Sal had to leave whichever city he was living in as soon as he could. At least on the surface that belies a rather surprising facility for running away from one’s problems; or perhaps it’s just meant to emphasize the degree to which Sal feels completely at odds with the world and his place in it. (Even though he does have a place he can call home, i.e. his aunt’s house.)

  • The duality of the road and money. The feeling that there’s a great deal of road left to cover, but not a lot of money available for that purpose, is essentially the book’s only constant. That’s an obvious observation, and it’s as true today vis-a-vis trains and planes as much as it was back then vis-a-vis buses and travel cars - but it’s interesting to see that so vividly and painstakingly conveyed.

On the whole I’d recommend reading this book: it’s simply too central to the American experience to ignore. At the same time, it certainly takes a bit of adjustment!