On The Road

Shunning materialism and ambition and setting out on the road to self-discovery, to treasure and immerse oneself in life's myriad experiences and the longing for freedom is a fine premise for a book. But unfortunately Jack Kerouac's literary style or lack of it and his rather naive outlook on certain facets of life keeps this book from being a great read. The 'Beat Generation' as Kerouac calls it, is a group of kids from the industrialized or developed world who feel disillusioned with the American Dream and set out to find meaning in life. However their attempts at finding meaning through cheap kicks and risks and trying to get under the skin of other people (namely Mexicans and African Americans) is a sad commentary on how the dominant culture, in its self-importance, patronizes the major world and cultures about which it has little understanding.

His romanticism about the lives of poor people, African Americans or other colored people seems to stem out of incomplete understanding about the ground reality, of seeing things on the surface the way you want to see and refusing to look deeper. This is the point of view of a man, who being born in the right (privileged) part of the world with the right color of skin is gracious enough to appreciate the children of a 'lesser' God. The book is fraught with such oversight. The characters in the book want freedom, but refuse to acknowledge that freedom comes with responsibilities. Women are relegated to the background and are not more that objects for Dean or Sal. They are in a hurry - images of death on their heels haunts them and even before the experiences from one trip can be distilled out they rush off on a second one and this goes on endlessly. Sal's devotion for Dean that borders on infatuation reminds me of the days in school when everyone wanted to follow the so-called 'IT' crowd. Whatever the cool guys did was right and fun and everyone just wanted to be with them. I was under the impression that this was a trait typical to adolescence but Kerouac's Sal has carried it much further into adulthood in a Peter Pan-ish way.

To be honest I might have enjoyed the book much more had I read it as a teenager, when wander-lust and adventurousness of spirit would have covered up for other lacunae and naivete in the narrative. Truman Capote dissmissed Kerouac saying "That's not writing, that's typing." That that might be a little harsh but then probably 20% of the book is filled with sentences like "Hey man dig that" in its different avatars.

This book might be an anthem or an eye-opener for the people of the dominant culture but it surely does not carry a universal appeal.