EPEOLATRY

BOOK 5

On the Road (1957)

by Jack Kerouac

This 281 pages has been a long read for me as I was traveling to places and was actually feeling the book.

'On the Road' is a Beat Classic which is a pioneering milestone with other works for the era of 1950s to be framed as 'Beat Generation', even The Beatles were inspired by it (notice the spelling despite its pronunciation). This revolutionary pieces were written in a very unique way which Kerouac calls 'Spontaneous Prose'. This book listed as fiction is actually a thinly veiled memoirs of the author which includes many Beat authors like Neal Cassady (being the hero Dean Moriarty), Allen Ginsberg & William S. Burroughs.

This book is an Odyssey of aimless wanderlust, infidelities, bigamy, meanderings and lawlessness of the post WWII men with no frontier to conquer. Though the vice this portrays and inspires generations of exuberant, passionate and adventure seekers to travel and to lead a different life away from all the materialistic bounds on the road with no destination.

Here I can see much hatred for this masterpiece due to all the hype and self-destructive nature. I think its fascination that how people come to meet such ends.

Some might say it is the sexy, dangerous devil in Cassady that somehow tempts others like Kerouac into ablative behavior. I think that the seeds of self-obliteration lie dormant in the person waiting for a Cassady or a bottle or a drug to come along and start the process. It's going to happen; the cause is unimportant.

Below quote at the climax symbolizes this perfectly - ' the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes “Awww! ". Thus at the end Dean was a sputtering but a beautiful Roman candle. The candle also symbolizes the generosity of the mad travellers which is deeply described

The work is so touchingly vibrant, I would recommend it to everyone who hustles to explore the so called Classics ...