50 Years of Sal and Dean

Ronald Bailey | September 5, 2007

It needs to be noted that today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's great novel, On the Road. The New York Times review on September 5, 1957 declared:

"On the Road" is the second novel by Jack Kerouac, and its publication is a historic occasion in so far as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in an age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlatives of fashion (multiplied a millionfold by the speed and pound of communications).

This book requires exegesis and a detailing of background. It is possible that it will be condescended to by, or make uneasy, the neo-academicians and the "official" avant-garde critics, and that it will be dealt with superficially elsewhere as merely "absorbing" or "intriguing" or "picaresque" or any of a dozen convenient banalities, not excluding "off beat." But the fact is that "On the Road" is the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat," and whose principal avatar he is.

Just as, more than any other novel of the Twenties, "the Sun Also Rises" came to be regarded as the testament of the "Lost Generation," so it seems certain that "On the Road" will come to be known as that of the "Beat Generation."

On the Road is one of those books that has meant a great deal to me over the course of my life. Every time I read it, I want to just pick and go (travel remains one of the great joys of my life). In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl, I wrote about my experiences at the 25th anniversary celebration of On the Road's publication at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO. I repeat it for this occasion below:

My friend David Burr and I travled by Greyhound from New York City to the Naropa Insitute in Boulder, Colo., to attend the 25th anniversary celebration of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The remaining Beats--all looking more than a little timeworn--gathered for the anniversary celebration including Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, Diane diPrima, Robert Creeley and Peter Orlovsky, John Clellon Holmes, William Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Kerouac's ex-wife Frankie Edith Kerouac Parker, and Carolyn Cassady. Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman showed up too.

I ran out of money and had to ride the bus back for three days without food or, worse yet, any cigarettes. A very Beat experience.

The famous 120 foot scroll on which Kerouac legendarily typed the novel is currently on display at a museum in his home town, Lowell, Mass. The scroll was bought for more than $2.4 million in 2001. The original version of the scroll will be published for the first time this September.

Finally, Nick Gillespie and I have had a long-running argument about whether or not On the Road or The Great Gatsby is the better book. I used to be a fierce partisan of On the Road, but I sat down last year and read them back-to-back and Fitzgerald won hands down. Nevertheless, On the Road is one of the truly great American novels.

Comments

|9.5.07 @ 3:51PM|#

Strange. I read the Times' review and couldn't help but want to smack the reviewer. All of the language seemed affected and over the top and I thought to myself 'why do people in this day and age have to use such language? Why use one word when 100 words will do? What a putz'. Then I realized that the review was written 50 years ago and thought 'Man, no one would ever write that way in this day and age ... not in the age of the bulletted list ... the sound bite!'. I wonder which of those two observations is more true? Or am I the putz in this scenario?

FWIW, I read 'On the Road' about 8 years ago in a fit of wanting to be hip. That and 'Naked Lunch'. Loved them both. They were a real impulse in the life of this small-town boy. Bought a book of Ginsberg's poetry as a matter of fact ... I think I read about 20 pages worth ... didn't even make it through 'Howl'. Guess I'm not that hip after all.

|9.5.07 @ 4:29PM|#

blg: May I suggest that when you have a chance you should listen to a recording of Ginsberg reading Howl?

|9.5.07 @ 4:53PM|#

Ron,

As long as I'm hip afterward!

Jackson Kuhl|9.5.07 @ 5:23PM|#

On the Road is not a very good novel but I understand and share your affection for it. Its plot and various scenes and sequences are forgettable but what remains after putting it down is its infectious energy. Just today I was riding around thinking about the need to make time. Good art, as they say, is that which makes you want to do something, and so in that sense On the Road is good because it makes you want to move. There is a place for it in every American's lifetime -- specifically, being young and poor and in an automobile of questionable mechanical integrity.

GILMORE|9.5.07 @ 5:53PM|#

Complaining that On the Road doesnt meet the hype was a popular pose to take in college literature classes...

but usually, like Kuhls comment above, the points made are usually about notable absenses...lack of formalism or narrative construct, no artful renditions of 'scenes', one dimensional characters, the lack of 'writerly' vocabulary...

9 times out of 10 critics are pointing out the very things that made it a watershed book. That it was a great novel despite lacking the form of traditional nove-writingl. they just dont *like* that, because it fucks up age-old formulaic literary concepts. I hear a lot of the same moaning about George Saunders these days - that hes a one trick pony, that he's too simplistic and cute. They never seem to note that he still achieves great effect with 8th grade level english.

i think maybe its something driven by the English masters-degree types... who generally can never write worth a damn, and often hate on things created by people who come from outside the peer-approved literary cliques.

I personally dont care about positioning this book in some canon, as those kinds of 'ranking' lists dont generally help people read books on their own terms anyway. Like, benchmarking Tolstoy against Keroac (#4 vs. #6?) isnt going to help you understand either any better. I think the simple proof of the books merit is that its been in print ever since it was written, and is widely read by people of all ages, in and out of classrooms, for pleasure and for acedemic edification... hard to say that about many of the 'great books' that people often cite as works of greater merit.


as a footnote...i liked Master and Margarita a whole lot better. :)

|9.5.07 @ 6:04PM|#

Finally, Nick Gillespie and I have had a long-running argument about whether or not On the Road or The Great Gatsby is the better book. I used to be a fierce partisan of On the Road, but I sat down last year and read them back-to-back and Fitzgerald won hands down. Nevertheless, On the Road is one of the truly great American novels.

I am happy that I have never read either book and even happier in the knowledge that I will never read them.

|9.5.07 @ 6:24PM|#

whether or not On the Road or The Great Gatsby is the better book. I used to be a fierce partisan of On the Road, but I sat down last year and read them back-to-back and Fitzgerald won hands down.

This I can't comprehend at all. I will never understand the respect Fitzgerald gets. Maybe I should give him another read, it's been twenty years now. But I just keep remembering how much I loathed the experience. On The Road at least had characters you could believe really existed. Gatsby and his pals were just a bunch of spoiled rich folks with too much of everything the rest of us are always short on and no redeeming qualities what so ever. How anyone can give two shits as to who Daisy winds up with?

The literary types that fawn all over it, talk up the 'gimmicks', i.e. foreshadowing, metaphor etc. I guess that's what literary types go for. But why anyone else notices, I can't figure.

GILMORE|9.5.07 @ 6:49PM|#

you probably had to read Gatsby in highschool

if you read it as an adult, the writing will kick you in the ass and throw you over a cliff. Fitzgerald was one of the most eloquent american stylists who also was speaking directly to his own historical moment the same way Kerouac was. It's not easy to appreciate as a younger person without any perspective on history.

|9.5.07 @ 6:51PM|#

Ron,
None of the hippies or beats were willing to lend you a few bucks for grub?
They all must have been and are now, democrats, which is another word for hypocrites.

Three days from Denver to NY on Greyhound?
Wow, I mean, if anything, back then with more routes and buses, it should have been shorter then that, with two days being max.

highnumber|9.5.07 @ 7:01PM|#

Gotta go with Mr Bailey on hearing Ginsberg read "Howl."
Wow. Good, good stuff.

GILMORE|9.5.07 @ 7:11PM|#

I think Kerouac got saddled with the 'beat' thing unfairly, and people end up lumping his stuff with burroughs and ferlinghetti corso, etc., when he really didnt share too much in common with them in many ways... politically he was more conservative, he was more spiritually inclined in general, and he never really got into dope too much. :) He was purely a booze man. I think its nice people find the other beat writers through Kerouac... as there are good things there indeed, like Coney Island of the Mind, Naked Lunch and other burroughs stuff, Howl, etc., but there isnt really any clear symmetry of purpose or style between these various writers... it just happened that they hung out together, and critics called them 'a movement'. I think if kerouac had any say he'd have disowned most of his friends when considering his own legacy. I recall from some documentary material i'd seen that he said as much before he drank himself to death.

M.|9.5.07 @ 7:40PM|#

I enjoyed on the road for about 2/3 of it, but then it just kept going and going... I know the whole point of it is that its raw and unedited, but still..

|9.5.07 @ 8:46PM|#

Little GTO . . .

wha?

|9.5.07 @ 10:04PM|#

I am the owner of a Jack Kerouac bobble-head. Because I live here.

Now, in my opinion, if you're going to create an image of Jack Kerouac with his head bobbing around, you really should have the benzedrine tubes scattered at his feet.

Matt Moore|9.5.07 @ 11:39PM|#

I loved Gatsby and did not like Kerouac (both were read in high school). But mostly this mystifies me:

I am happy that I have never read either book and even happier in the knowledge that I will never read them.

Why do are you proud of your deliberate ignorance?

|9.6.07 @ 8:23AM|#

This just in: One man proves that ignorance IS bliss.

"I am happy that I have never read either book and even happier in the knowledge that I will never read them."

|9.6.07 @ 8:30AM|#

I found that the experience of reading "On the Road" was greatly enhanced when reading it while listening to Coltrane.

|9.6.07 @ 10:04AM|#

The commitment to not reading really comes through in his commentary, too.

|9.7.07 @ 12:45AM|#

I don't get it. I read 2-3 books a week, and to me Kerouac is unfinishable. A great novel? It is more of a morass of unedited-stream-of- consciousness existentialist bull. IMHO the only way to read Kerouac is to do it stoned. That way when you fall asleep you can blame the drugs.