On the road

[Anonymous No.12867921]

Am I missing something? It was 300+ pages of rambling about hanging out with his asshole pal. I know it's said that "it defines the beat generation" but honestly what's so great about beat? Lazy writing from lazy people.

[Anonymous No.12867945]

You're only supposed to talk about the book, not read it you idiot!


Have fun with a detailed chapter of how to get high and fuck mexican child prostitutes.

[Anonymous No.12867956]

>>12867921
the beats are shit and as a consequence their defining work is also shit. the only people who care about the beats are vaguely alternative boomers, reading them is the equivalent of listening to bob dylan. just skip to the actually good post-beat novels like Pynchon's V rather than wasting your time with this kind of thing

[Anonymous No.12868025]

>>12867921
If you actually care to learn about what you are missing google for 'on the road yale opencourseware' there are a couple great lectures on it on youtube. I don't recall the professors name but she really does a great job of showing why it is a natural continuation of the modernist projects that came before it (think Joyce, Woolf, etc)

[Anonymous No.12868045]

>>12867921
Kerouac's prose is poetic if you know how to pay attention.

How you can go through 300+ pages and not noticing it is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.12868109]

>>12868045
It's a divide. Kerouac was loved by 70s youth, and again in the 90s by sensitive Generation Xers. Now the millennial/Z kids don't have the same interest in lyricism and un-PC worldviews etc. It's sad but their loss. My kind of writing isn't fashionable today, but I hate today's fashion.

[Anonymous No.12868140]

>>12868045
Kerouacs prose is shit and you know it! You could tell when he added something in he thought was well written and it made me cringe.

[Anonymous No.12868150]

>>12868109
What are you talking about, this generation is all about white nationalism and destroying the PC culture. The beats are shit, that's all, that's why nobody besides boomers care about them.

[Anonymous No.12868159]

>>12867921
Read Big Sur instead.

[Anonymous No.12868175]

>>12868109
I've read an article where the author praised his prose, saying that it's actually really hard to write like that. He actually calls out the people who tried and failed at copying it, stating that they are a part of the reason why Kerouac is underappreciated.

There's also a small part in Deleuze's Anti-Oedip, stating that On The Road is a pretty good representation of his definition of schizophrenia as a process (I might slaughter this one because I'm not studying philosophy), because the book is anti-capitalist.

I'm actually impressed how much value people pull out of it, well, I guess that happens when you go beyond the "Mom! They are fucking prostitutes and drinking alcohol!"

[Anonymous No.12868200]

>>12868109
part of it is that zoomers have lost any idea of 'America' as a spiritual project, and they lack any inclination of traveling outside their little internet bubbles and suburbs. I have never seen a valid literary criticism of The Beat generation from a zoomer, it always falls back to Burrough's pedophilia and gun-loving.

[Anonymous No.12868211]

>>12868175
And Truman Capote said of kerouacs prose that it was "simply typing, not writing". I don't think you can get any more accurate.

[Anonymous No.12868241]

I read On the Road when I was a retarded 14 year old who only read on weekends, and then it was 10 pages a day, and I couldn't into prose (I couldn't read just for the prose until I read Lolita when I was 15). I remember very little about it, but I don't think I liked it. The stuff I kind of remember has a vague nostalgia-y 'I wish I liked it' feeling.
Should I reread it? Other books I first read at that point which I liked much, much more on a reread include The Great Gatsby and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man