On the Road (Paperback)

While many things have and can be said about this book - that it describes a hedonistic search for release and meaning, lost souls in search for the metaphorical holy grail, self-obsessed idiots using and abusing people and circumstances - to me this book is primarily about life. But this isn't life as many of us know it, this is life on the very edge of sanity where mystical experience mingles with psychosis.

I believe this is why the book is such a love/hate piece of literature. If you haven't felt the desperation in life that looms so heavily over Dean Moriarty's and Sal Paradise's heads, there is no way you can sympathize with or understand them. If I as a reader haven't had the experience of extreme dissatisfcation, of a tremendous longing for something better and an image in my mind of there being a way of living that is more genuine, more rewarding, I wouldn't be able to connect with the deeper meaning of this novel.

So in essence, this book's primary theme is a spiritual one, the search for *what is*. The frenzied protagonists Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise travelling across the somewhat grim backdrop of a post-World War 2 American landscape keep searching for this meaning in the external world of people, situations, places and experiences. The book reveals how this search goes unfulfilled, but in a way, you feel that it is not, after all, a waste of time. In a very real way, these protagonists display a level of sanity above and beyond what most of us possess, as having touched the depths of the human condition, they are among the few that go searching for more. Unwilling to let social conditioning, conformity and a sense of fitting in hold them back, their search is completely uninhibited. (and as such, probably offensive)

I believe this testament to the power of the human spirit is what makes people love the book. Possibly, what makes people hate it is that it brings to light the painful realization of how most of us go through life without ever having truly lived - living a timid life in fear of the unknown, unwilling to take a chance on something better. A simpler explanation could be the convoluted language which is difficult to interpret at times.

Even though it is obvious that the literary creations of Kerouac's (and probably Kerouac himself) go about their goal of release in ways that are in large part misinformed - primarily looking outside instead of inside, the experience of tagging along is definitely worthwhile and can teach us a thing or two about our own search for happiness. Make no mistake - in our joyless contemporary society, this work is as relevant as ever.

In conclusion, I would like to offer a parallel between the character of Dean Moriarty and my favourite Albert Einstein quote:

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed"

If this is not something you agree with, you will likely hate this book. However, if this sounds strangely familiar, I suspect this book will teach you a thing or two about life.

So, in response to other reviewers, who I can almost believe do not have one passionate or adventurous bone in their bodies: Can you not see the pure and simple LIFE of this story? I cannot believe anyone could dismiss this. I was devastated to reach the final page; it is so rare to find such a miracle. So please, show me a more faultless achievement of a novel, for I would love to read it. But I believe you'll have difficulties- this is as close to perfection as it gets.

And to those who have the soul and the insight into the heart of a real darling, angel of a man, to share in my delight, there is a poem by William Burroughs that may interest you:

Remembering Jack Kerouac

Writers are, in a way, very powerful indeed. They write the script for the reality film. Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages. Now if writers could get together into a real tight union, we'd have the world right by the words. We could write our own universes, and they would all be as real as a coffee bar or a pair of Levis, or a prom in the Jazz Age. Writers could take over the reality studio. So they must not be allowed to find out that they can make it happen. Keroac understood this long before I did. Life is a dream, he said.