A tiresome drive with Kerouac’s On the Road

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is an important novel for the 60’s counterculture/anti-establishment movement. Unfortunately, it is also a great bore for anyone younger, like myself, who lived outside the era and the people this novel was speaking to.

The book is based on Kerouac’s own travels across the country with his friends in the late ’40s and ’50s. The main character and narrator is Sal, a smart young writer who likes to party and lives a very bohemian lifestyle (although a bit of a fake one, since he regularly asks his aunt for money to fuel his escapades). Sal has a huge bro-mance with a fellow wanderer named Dean. Sal idolizes Dean, who is a completely carefree spirit and rebel against the system. The book starts out fun enough, detailing Sal’s trip from New York to San Francisco to meet up with Dean, with a stopover to hang with friends in Denver. Sal bus’s when he has money, hitchhikes when he doesn’t, and makes it all the way on just $50. His ordeals on the road make for great reading. He makes friends, meets lots of eccentric, like-minded people, and takes it all in stride.

Unfortunately the rest of the book is more of the same. There are periods when Sal settles down for a few months here and there, taking an odd job or something, but most of the book is the regular cross-country trips, either alone or with Dean and other friends. The joy and excitement of the trips wears after awhile, and my “type A” personality wanted to start shaking Sal and tell him to get away from the lowlife Dean and do something with his life. Sal himself finally does realize this (but not before his other friends foretell it) when Dean abandons him during a trip down to Mexico. Whereas Sal is “growing up” and ready to start a family, Dean can’t stay in one city for a few months before he starts getting itchy and wanting to move on. Dean has dotted the country with girlfriends and ex-wives, and even at the end of the book, he shows no inclination of slowing down, despite the hardships his life has taken on his body.

I don’t argue that this was a defining novel for a generation, but it’s just not my generation. A fine enough book, but I don’t think it belongs in this list of “greatest ever.”