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Rpt. in Lee, Michelle (2009). Poetry Criticism (subscription required). Vol. 95. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2015. ISBN 9781414451848. a b Carden, Mary Pannicia (2009). Hilary Holladay and Robert Holton (ed.). " 'Adventures in Auto-Eroticism': Economies of Traveling Masculinity in On the Road and The First Third". What's Your Road, Man?. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press: 169–185. Yes, all that stuff between the bookends of OTR might be typing, it might be preserving ephemerality that wasn't worthy or deserving. VITALE: In the spring of 1951, Kerouac famously typed the entire first draft of "On The Road" in just three weeks on a continuous scroll of papers so he would never have to stop typing.
I deeply cherish but don't know that I fully agree with Truman Capote's assessment: that _ On the Road_ "is not writing at all -- it's typing." Viking Press released a slightly edited version of the original manuscript, titled On the Road: The Original Scroll (August 16, 2007), corresponding with the 50th anniversary of original publication. This version has been transcribed and edited by English academic and novelist Howard Cunnell. As well as containing material that was excised from the original draft, due to its explicit nature, the scroll version also uses the real names of the protagonists, so Dean Moriarty becomes Neal Cassady and Carlo Marx becomes Allen Ginsberg, etc. [11] We omit to specify that Kerouac had been working on this novel for two or even three years and that it was in a mad frenzy (doped with coffee!) He wrote this roll in one go after gluing each sheet individually. Of paper to make a single strip, thus assimilating it to the mythical route of Route 66, the one that crosses the USA from east to west; continuous reading, without the shadow of a paragraph, is perhaps a parallel with the monotony of this route 66 but that its text is long, long.
He commented on the difficulty he had reading the Beat novels. He had tried but he had been unable to finish any one of them. None of these people have anything interesting to say,” he observed, “and none of them can write, not even Mr. Kerouac.” What they do, he added, “isn’t writing at all—it’s typing.” The trouble is a matter of repetition. Everything Mr. Kerouac has to tell about Dean has been told in the first third of the book, and what comes later is a series of variations on the same theme. It's a good theme—the inability of a young man of enormous energy, considerable intelligence, and a kind of muddled talent for absorbing experience to find any congenial place for himself in organized society—but the variations are all so much alike that they begin to cancel each other out. Just about that time a strange thing began to haunt me. It was this: I had forgotten something. There was a decision that I was about to make before Dean showed up, and now it was driven clear out of my mind but still hung on the tip of my mind's tongue." (P. 124) Certainly no one is going to induct the mystery novelist John Creasey, author of 564 novels under 21 different pseudonyms, into the Literary Hall of Heroes; both he and his creations (the Toff, Inspector Roger West, Sexton Blake, etc.) have largely been forgotten. I despise it. (Living in Denver, Kerouactown, makes me hate him more!) A tale of a closeted individual who really has nothing to say. He has glorified a ruffian (DEAN DEAN DEAN... DEAN!) whose selfishness sits well with him. What Sal does say, however, ever so dully, is just how Cool those around him are, how his only addition to this incomprehensible BEAT movement is as lame as those of a newspaper photographer: he sees and reports, jots idle musings down. What he fails to understand (the main guy is not even YOUNG... [he is old & stupid, desperate & pathetic]!!!) is how entirely false this sense of freedom can be: Can a sheep really outwit the shepherd? Here's a supreme example of the blind leading... I sternly refuse to follow such idiotic drivel. This is a book for followers written by a Conformist, for one can always be some selfproclaimed comfortable conformist of nonconformism.
The writing makes you feel the musics energy pulsating and driving - that is one of my favorite aspects of On the Road: Yes! It has all of the food groups - especially if you have it with ice cream." He paused. "Except pie isn’t as filling as you would think it would be, so we had to drink a lot of beer to make up for that. And we ate a lot of multi-vitamins because we felt terrible. We would stop and camp out by the road, eating pie and drinking beer with multi-vitamins. In terms of a travelogue, this isn’t it. At one point, Sal travels to Detroit, but there aren’t even any details. I'm not going to hold it against anyone that they like this book. I know that it influenced some important and serious artists, who were many times Kerouac's superiors. I understand its appeal, and even its historical importance. But reading it today, and not being 16 anymore, it really is a bit of a joke.At 30 I read it again to see if it was still vibrant and relevant and happy to be all alive. I was looking for a touchstone, spinning out of control, recently divorced, directionless, had bought (what I thought was, for no clear reason) a hot car, spent money I didn't have on a cool stereo system, started to live and drink and drive faster and faster. I had been teaching at that point eight years; My life was in a crisis of my own making. I was deeply disappointed in myself as what I read in the writing not only didn't reinforce my bad choices but reflected on my own excesses and mistakes and sadness; I found the writing turgid, narcissistic, badly edited, somewhat misogynist, drunken wastrel prose, though I saw better this time in it the deep sadness underlying the wild surface. I thought it was writing of a certain time in your life, but when you grow up you leave those childish things behind. I tried to get my life together and went to grad school. On the road, eh. I had found it in some ways juvenile and about selfish individualism this time, mine and his. 2 stars. The descriptions of bebop jazz are absolutely astounding throughout as they listen to Prez, Bird, Dizzy... Maher, Paul Jr. Kerouac: The Definitive Biography. Lanham, Md.: Taylor Trade Publishing, 1994, 317. In the six years that passed between the composition and publication of On the Road, Kerouac traveled extensively, experimented with Buddhism and wrote many novels that went unpublished at the time. His next published novel, The Dharma Bums (1958), described Kerouac's clumsy steps toward spiritual enlightenment on a mountain climb with friend Gary Snyder, a Zen poet. Dharma was followed that same year by the novel The Subterraneans, and in 1959, Kerouac published three novels: Dr. Sax, Mexico City Blues and Maggie Cassidy. Johnston, Allan (Spring 2005). "Consumption, Addiction, Vision, Energy: Political Economies and Utopian Visions in the Writings of the Beat Generation". College Literature. 32 (2): 103–126. doi: 10.1353/lit.2005.0028. JSTOR 25115269. S2CID 144789716.
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