90% of criticism against this book is literally "BUT THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE / KEROAC AND CASSADY ARE BIG MEANIES / MY FEEBLE MIND CAN'T HANDLE THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS"
Why is this? why is this book demonized so much yet I seldom see any actual valid criticisms? And I also detect either love or HATE from most people, nothing in between. Why is this?
On the Road general I guess
Luke Brooks
I found it boring. The Dharma Bums is his best work.
Aiden Jackson
I liked the book, I dont understand the all the fuss though. Is it more than just a look at an interesting part of America's history?
Adam Lee
I prefer Big Sur to DB
I don't get it either. the people in Veeky Forums who hate this book spend their time criticizing the "degeneracy" in it and that's pretty much it
Liam Jenkins
It relies heavily on whether or not the reader gets on board with the characters and if they buy into the whole "youth adrift" schtick. By the time it was written it wasn't an achievement of prose style, nor did it portray anything particularly new or ground breaking. The strong feelings of hate are because it's tiring to hear a mediocre novel shilled as being something more than it is by people who aren't well read.
Easton Peterson
I couldn't get on with Dharma Bums, seemed like Kerouac at his most insufferable. At least in OTR they're travelling, DB just seemed to be a few college kids blowing smoke up each others arses.
The First Third by Neal Cassady is a decent, quick read. An unfinished autobiography, he only covers his childhood and family history going back a few generations but it's an interesting insight into why he was how he was.
Bentley Myers
yeah the Buddhist stuff was cringey at points Big Sur is Kerouac dismissing his Buddhism and going back to being a raging, depressed alcoholic
I still need to read The First Third
Connor Turner
It's just that it's not a particularly good book. It has some value for its depiction of post-WWII subculture, but apart from that, there's not much else.
Eli Powell
>Why is this? why is this book demonized so much yet I seldom see any actual valid criticisms?
i think people go in expected to be blown away and are let down when they're not. on the road was probably the one of the first widely spread and genuinely subversive contemporary novels people read in postwar america, when the planet seemed a lot bigger, and many budding writers/artists who weren't necessarily hanging around in artistic circles or big cities found it revelatory: as in, you can do things _this_ way? where do i find _these_ people?
in today's wikipedia society it's tame next to everything that came after it. the brief spell of its legendary status is broken with a few clicks, because on the road has been the no. 1 boilerplate for american boho-ethnographies ever since it came out and is still being done to death in a world far less interesting than kerouac's
it's a bit like elvis: all the musical greats of the '60s and '70s will go on about how he changed everything, but today he just sounds like roadside diner background music to most people
John Scott
This.
Even at 18, the age I read it, I found it disappointing.
When it was published he was hyped as some literary genius who claimed to have written the entire thing in a single overnight burst of creativity. The truth was, he typed it overnight after substantial edits and such.
I also wonder if his book suited a more corporate agenda. Associating the open road with existential freedom is the main theme in nearly every car advert.
Julian Reed
I think it's actually jealousy that Kerouac put minimal effort into something that became hugely popular and is still widely read today
Elijah Myers
Apparently you understand the book a lot more once you grow older
I'd have to agree, the book is about being a ''wild youth'' and living a carefree/careless lifestyle, but it's also about how eventually you have to leave that behind.
Eli Watson
>90% of criticism against this book Are you basing this claim on criticism you read of it here or elsewhere, or both?
Christian Collins
I love On The Road, but as some other anons mentioned I think anyone's opinion is going to be formed around how they relate to the theme of being adrift. I imagine a lot of Veeky Forums feels that they're above that, and that the book only appeals to the childish. Maybe they're right, but I don't care, I can't change who I am and who I am is someone who deeply appreciates this book.
Jonathan Roberts
This, Kerouac and the other Beats existed during a time where most people still read shit like Charles Dickens
Nathan Sanders
I love this book so much. And I love Kerouac so much. And I don't even care that Beat Generation writers were dirty degenerates.
To answer your question, OP: in order to offer a constructive/valid criticism, one has to understand the subject of the criticism. And most people can't be arsed to do that so they just stick to "I've read fist 20 pages and I hated it, it's badly written, incomprehensible and promotes dirty lifestyle" meme critique.
Jeremiah Evans
do people seriously hate this book because of 'degeneracy'?
Do they think other writers were all priests by comparison?
Xavier Stewart
i love on the road but mexico city blues will always be the best thing jack ever did
Ian Reed
Big Sur all the way. I'm a recovering alcoholic, and I've not yet found a more accurate depiction of the disease (inb4 Under the Volcano).
Isaac Wood
>that multi chapter, gut wrenching detailed description of the days before the trip, screwing around with Neal's mistress, and the slow descent into his booze induced mental breakdown and the hallucinations he went through
Sebastian Powell
here and elsewhere, including leddit
Ethan Clark
The only thing that turns me off of Kerouac is he can be boring and pretentious, which just isn’t fun or interesting to read, and there’s nothing earth-shattering or life-changing enough to make me want to push through the bullshit in the hopes that it will eventually get good somewhere.
Leo Ramirez
>Kerouac >pretentious wat why are so many people calling him pretentious? sure he was naive as fuck and borderline child like in a lot of ways where is this "Kerouac is pretentious" meme coming from?
Eli James
dude we went to a place and we did things then we went to another place and did other things also jazz is cool and cities glow
Ryder Roberts
>look mom, I can haz reductionism xd
Logan Cox
I enjoyed the trip.
Jayden Thomas
damn dude you should get a job as a journo at a magazine like NY Mag or The New Yorker or the Economist holy god that was banal
Easton Morris
Go into any hipsters house and out of the six books they have, this is one of them.
Nicholas Jenkins
Lonesome Traveller his best book by a long long way
Thomas Long
More like two of them. One is the reading copy.
Evan Butler
It reeks of boring sheltered white guy just like Thompson Bukowski and Palahniuk
Kevin Robinson
why don't you tell me how you really feel
Bentley Ramirez
Why read On the Road to get that message? Might as well read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which has that as well as a thousand other themes and psychological insights rather than just prose masturbation.
Robert Williams
Ok I might read it if I come across it some time. OTF was fun but DB put me right off, made me wonder if I'd grown out of Kerouac desu.
He can be very flashy in his writing style, plus he's quite self-congratulatory about what he and his circle achieved or would do. And his take on Eastern mysticism is just bollocks, I understand accessing info was more of an issue then but he comes across as a dilettante. Yeah
Kevin Morris
Didn't it all happen in real life. Kerouac went on that trip for real
Colton Sullivan
It happened, but not exactly as presented. On The Road is not biographic, it's Kerouac looking back and presenting a nostalgic, idealized account of his trip.
Brandon Powell
Good post.
I feel like the Beats are all just Miller's children though. He already got the mad stream of consciousness bohemian degeneracy down in the interbellum.
With Miller you really get that 'fugg, this was written in the 30s?' feeling, while the beats underwhelm for contemporary people.