I think this book would have meant more to me had a read it earlier, at a time when it still felt like I had no idea where I was going or what I'd be or who I was; as it stands, I am only vaguely more aware of those things, but I have gathered enough clues to feel only pity for lost souls, not empathy.
I think the history of this book is part of the huge appeal of it for me, it also leads me to forgive it for some things I would be harsher on if it were unreality (or fiction, as it is often called). It also lends credence to it. Some things are nice to look out from a distance, to view in an abstract projected form, but things that are very real to everyone -- such as being lost -- can benefit from the closer inspection of reality. Knowing that Dean Moriarty is actually Neal Cassady makes him so much more important, not because I had any inkling of who Neal Cassady was, but because it meant he was really real, and he was really tragic. It was the inverse effect of In Cold Blood, what made the reality of that horrid made this beautiful.
Normally I would like to feel a closer connection to characters, but the reality of them made me forgiving of them; I've known people as lost and screwed up as them, and from a distance I can pity them, while from a proximity I hate them, so it is with the distance of space and time that I can pity Dean and Sal instead of loathing them for their indifference, for their lack of foresight or care for those around them. I can understand the mad desire for freedom but also the feverish result of it. Poor Dean and Sal want only to constantly see and to feel, and it is the wild, free America of their generation that lets them embrace hedonism and even to promote it to some degree. There was no one to stop the crazy search of the youth and America was so grand and inviting that there was few who would want to stop it. For all the foolishness and callousness of Sal and his friends there is a deep respect I hold for those that would question their world and try to understand it, even if I don't agree with those methods. Dean may have been unaffected by the cruelty of his actions but at least he was doing them himself, at least he wasn't being led to cruelty by others.
I think it is important to see America in this novel, to see what it was and still is, all of its amazingly different places and people and loves and hates. If nothing else, this book makes me want to ride the Mississippi and visit Harlem and Denver and meet a stranger in a bar and invite them to a party. There is a sickening urge to explore America in the fashion they did taking it a hundred miles a minute and never stopping to really let the dust settle, constantly stirring it up and beaming at the motes in the sun.
I can recall -- actually still feel -- that urge to live as fast and insanely as Sal and his friends. Driving fast and mad and living without burden of care and shrugging off cultural pretexts is so appealing that I find myself still partaking, but only in small and healthy doses. Dean became addicted and lost on a high that never ended.
Aside from the thought-provoking subject and the ways it makes one look inward, there is the book itself, the book as a book, which I suppose is equally important. I wasn't so impressed with that. I was impressed with the honest portrayal of interesting people, but little in Kerouac's composition or prose really lit the fire beneath me or made the beauty water my eyes. There is also pacing, which I think Kerouac's lifestyle never led him to comprehend. He wrote this novel the same way he lived it, and while I admire that as a process, I do not admire the result, which I ultimately put more importance in because it is all that remains of the effort.
The different sections of the novel are largely interchangeable. The novel has no progression or apparent growth and any changes happen off-camera. The writing of Sal's novel, perhaps something that may have been pivotal in his understanding or pacing of life, is paid so little attention it may as well have been nonexistent. It is said that a well-rounded character must have growth and change to be considered; while not entirely sure I agree with the sentiment, I can understand the value, and I think the characters of On the Road stay fairly consistent. And while I understand that in life this is not the way of things, I would argue that is the reason there is a distinction. Novels cannot fully emulate life because life is not as beautiful, as tragic, or as entertaining. Life is sometimes boring and beautiful and tragic, but never as consistently, and so we change it. I am only told many of the events and feelings of the characters, only really seeing the character of Dean, who as important as he is, cannot carry the novel alone.
I think it is this attention to pacing, the parts falling together into one large jumble that seems only to roll on endlessly, that ultimately hampered my love for the novel. I still love what it is about, but I think it could do with serious trimming and primping -- much like the lifestyles of those involved.
- Cupcake
