On the Road, Jack Kerouac
The first person who reviewed Jack Kerouac’s novel was Gilbert Millstein – his review appeared in New York Times 4th September 1957 and he had written: “On the Road” is the second novel by Kerouac and its publication is a historic occasion insofar as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in any age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlative of fashion.
On the Road is a novel of experience; it tells tales of madness played out by all kinds of strange characters, in settings as diverse as a Virginia small-town diner, a New York jazz-joint, and a Mexican whore-house. What connects these adventures is the characters’ refusal to miss out on life, and their determination to get the most out of now.
The novel is the most executed, the clearest and the most important utterance made by the generation of Kerouac, named years ago as “beat” and whose principal avatar he is.
It seems that the “beat generation” had an one and only ideology, and that was life. Kerouac himself sums it up as “everything belongs to me because I am poor”.
Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, a crazy youth “tremendously excited with life” are racing around America, testing the limits of the American Dream. It seems like both of them seize the day, live their life cause death might come too early – before they will be able to finish what they have started. The desperation and the lack of fulfillment made these youths feel that “the only thing to do was go”, searching for their personal freedom, and finding pleasure in sex, drugs, and jazz.
Summarized by Fushinha
