About halfway through "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. Bored and irritated. Any reason to finish?

In Sum This wrote:

Read Hubert Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn" instead

Read both!! Kerouac mentions recommends Selby in his letters btw, calls him an American Genet or somesuch, this when Selby still living in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Have you read 'you can't win ' by Jack black? I remember loving it. It reminded me of on the road but was more engrossing. I've read a bunch of Kerouac and admit he gets boring. I've wanted to venture into more into genre of 'you can't win' as the real adventure and lawlessness of a still developing mordern world is fascinating.

I think Dharma Bums is supperior and less irritating.

Also second Travels with Charly, just read it recently and thought it was great

jorvack wrote:

I think Dharma Bums is supperior and less irritating.

Also second Travels with Charly, just read it recently and thought it was great

+1 and +1. Desolation Angels was also better than OTR. I would also recommend Orwell's Homage to Catalonia about his experiences travelling and fighting during the Spanish Civil War.

It is dull and tiresom I agree. He was a speed freak and he wrote about speed freaks and how wonderful they were. Really of course they were just wasters with low self esteem trying to romanticize their drug habits.

Stagger Lee wrote:

jorvack wrote:

I think Dharma Bums is supperior and less irritating.

Also second Travels with Charly, just read it recently and thought it was great

+1 and +1. Desolation Angels was also better than OTR. I would also recommend Orwell's Homage to Catalonia about his experiences travelling and fighting during the Spanish Civil War.

I was going to suggest starting with Orwell (but Down and Out in Paris and London), before Kerouac. In case anyone is interested, here's a good progression for modern travel memoirs:

Down and Out in Paris and London (Orwell)

On the Road (Kerouac)

Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Kesey)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Thompson)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig)

Swimming to Cambodia (Gray--fortunately, you can watch the movie, which is the author delivering a monologue. Much better and funnier than it sounds.)

I recommend...

A Walk in the Woods and Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. The former is about his trip up the Appalachian Trail and the latter about a journey across Australia.

I like Steinbeck but 'Travels With Charley' is pretty insipid.

"On The Road" is great but it might not be in Kerouac's top five; people who don't know "Vanity of Dulouz," "Dr. Sax," "Big Sur," "Desolation Angels" and others only have a partial, misleading view of his genius...

... which, for starters, is the greatest narrative gift since what... Defoe?

Much, if not all, of the poetry is excellent and "Visions of Cody" is worth struggling with. The movie of "The Subterraneans" is pretty bad but has its moments.

Agree with previous poster about Kerouac audio, it really demonstrates the extraordinary, singular level he was operating at.

Skeptics should read Jack's intro to Robert Frank "The Americans".

No I haven't read that book. I'm actually not a fan of Kerouac; i'm of the party who stopped reading On The Road. If you want lawlessness before a developed society, I highly recommend the famous Blood Meridian. This is my favorite book by what I think is the greatest living American author and is on par with Hemingway and Faulkner.

Blood Meridian is pure violence and evil in the unsettled west. I've read it twice and each time was better. I'll be reading it a 3rd time for a course in the fall. Another good book is The Son by Philipp Meyer. He's revered down here at UT. This is a generational book that is a captivity narrative on the surface but is really a generational story/a history of texas underneath that. Everything is extremely well researched and written.

This! Another Beat Nerd was Richard Brautigan of "Trout Fishing in America" fame. Pure dribble through and through. The 60's were basically the decade of Wack Jobs!

Belicheck's Hoodie: I will definitely take some recommendations on books. I'm obsessed with McCarthy and most southern/western literature. Blood Meridian is also my favorite book and I've read it 8 or 9 times - I always find something new.

I'm a big Larry Brown fan. Larry McMurtry is also great, if not a little pulpy; he's more of a fun read. Faulkner, Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor are all right up my alley. Have you read any Harry Crews? First time I read A Feast of Snakes I literally finished the last page and went right back to the first to reread it. What else can you recommend in this genre?

I enjoyed On the Road, but I read it many years ago as a high school student. I think the Dharma Bums was better; the character of Japhy Ryder / Gary Snyder is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters.

Haha well I might have oversold myself. I'm just a senior undergrad but my purview is southern and western literature. Honestly, you sound pretty well versed in the subject. I've read a lot of McMurtry and agree some of his work is pulpy, but he's pretty much said that he's put out a ton of crap because of the money they keep offering him. My favorites are Lonesome Dove and Horseman, Pass By. If you like Lonesome Dove, the sequels/prequels aren't as good but are worth reading.

Are you familiar with any of Katherine Anne Porter's stories? She's a great writer. I'd pick up The Old Order by her which is a small book of a few short stories. "The Grave" and "Old Mortality" are really good. There's an anthology titled "Lone Star Literature" and it's edited by a professor of mine whom I have a good relationship with. McMurtry also wrote the foreword for it.

My big recommendation is what I told the other poster. "The Son" by Philipp Meyer is such a great book. He is heavily influenced by Cormac, Faulkner, and other souther writers and it shows. He's excellent at free indirect discourse.

I was actually fine until the last third, when the constant sex got tiresome. Yeah, I get it, you're gay. Not that I even care, but can we just move on?

I recommend you spend 45 minutes listening to a John Coltrane album. If after listening to it you didn't get anything out of it, then quit reading Kerouac. I think that book has become increasingly irrelevant. In the 50s in 60s when baby boomers were coming of age after WW2, The freeway system started being built, I can imagine that book was a revelation. Now with skype, facebook and cheap air fare, the "road" is just not of interest.

msi wrote:

I picked up a copy from my library and have been reading it. I enjoyed probably the first 40 pages, but it has gotten progressively boring and tiresome. I am a bit more than halfway through right now and have no desire to continue. Am I missing out on anything?

Ken Kesey didn't write The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Tom Wolfe wrote it, Ken Kesey was the main character.

I lived in the Los Altos Hills during that time period. I spent a lot of time (on acid) in La Honda and San Gregorio Beach and the Merry Pranksters were an embarrassment.

Late one night in the Santa Cruz mountains, a friend and I were pulled off Moody Road when we heard the sound of screeching tires in the distance. A few minutes later this old pickup truck comes flying by with no headlights on. The madman had a strobe light mounted to the hood and I still don't know how he kept from going off the road. To this day we still believed it was Neal Cassidy.

Brautigan was a genius, read Confederate General, The Abortion, Sombrero Fallout... The poetry is rarely as good but decent and sometimes better. Of course you've already internalized Jack Spicer and know that I'm sure.

Some of the posters here are frighteningly deaf to humor, poetry, gumption.

Oddities wrote:

If you're a teenager or in your early 20's then it is an awesome book. If you're older I am sure you'll find it relentlessly irritating.

This. I read it when I was about 19 and absolutely loved it. Didn't really revisit it until I was given a copy of the original scroll version when I was 45. Other than it was kind of cool that it used real names (E.g., "Neal" instead of "Dean") and had some material not in the original, I found it tiresome and the characters, on the whole, as self-indulgent and not very likeable.

Just like once a runner both very overrated