About this title: This bible of the Beat Generation is a modern classic of the unforgettable exuberance, poignancy, and passion of the 1950s. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of "On the Road" comes Keroacs original scroll version, published in a standard book format.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Book Club (BCE/BOMC)
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Viking, New York
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780739494264ISBN:0739494260
Description: Very Good. No Jacket as Issued. Light edgewear to the covers with a small crease to the back cover at the bottom side edge. Otherwise a clean copy with an uncreased spine. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Books
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780670063550ISBN:067006355X
Description: Fine in new dust jacket. like new condition, this book was never opened. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 416 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: New. B001KOTU7Y *NEW* BARGAIN Hardcover with DJ. Fresh from the distributor with No price tags. May have remainder mark on edge. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780143105466ISBN:0143105469
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Deluxe Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2008-08-26
ISBN-13:9780143105466ISBN:0143105469
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780143105466. read more
Edition: 2 REV ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PEARSON EDUCATION LIMITED Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781405882460ISBN:1405882468
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 88 pages. Contemporary / american english (available april 2008) one of the most famous american books of the century. love, jazz, and excitement! these are all part of sal paradise's adventures on the road with wild friend dean moriarty, and their crazy companions, as they travel across the usa. edition 2 rev ed (Paperback) read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS LTD Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780141189215ISBN:0141189215
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 416 pages. Chronicles jack kerouac's years traveling the north american continent with his friend neal cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy west. " (Paperback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Pr
Date Published: 2007-08-01
ISBN-13:9780670063550ISBN:067006355X
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780670063550. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Adult
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780670063550ISBN:067006355X
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Spoken Word Compact Disc
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Date Published: 2008-09-18
ISBN-13:9780143143796ISBN:0143143794
Description: NEW. Spoken Word Compact Disc. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780143143796. read more
Binding: Audio CD
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780143143796ISBN:0143143794
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
"I enjoyed this book far more a few years ago. I think Kerouac's tale is decent, gloriously rebellious, but over-hyped; this book is marked with a few fantastic insights but my belief is that On The Road is only popular due to timeliness and the oft-consumed glamorization of alcoholism. Kerouac was the face of the movement, not the grit.
William Burroughs was able to write about such tales while bringing to life the disease, the twisting of the gut that follows escapades similar to Kerouac's, only with less Hollywood-style machismo. His prose was searing and linguistically-interesting. Allen Ginsberg brought the politics, the societal rebellion.
I enjoy On The Road a bit more, however, when it is coupled with his daughter's personal essays, which add a touch of reality to the narrative fiction that makes up this book. The thing needs more perspective for me now."
"Where would Kerouac have been without Ginsberg? Kerouac's novels based on his early life in Lowell Massachusetts were evocative stories sprung from intense memory, often atmospheric and psychologically interesting. Those who want to search for clues to the unhappy later life of the writer can probably find them, but I prefer just to tag along through his fictionalized adventures and their ups and downs.
As for On The Road... I can't get over the feeling that Ginsberg was the puppet master and Kerouac was the foil -- a useful fool -- to attract the attention of the world to the Beats and make them the leaders of the underground lit movement of the time. Did Kerouac really want to be a Buddhist? Did he really want to do speed? Was he much more conservative than the others like Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, etc.? He grew to dislike something about his life -- that's clear from the sad way he wound up. He was willing to play the good-looking lit figurehead for the ship of Beat, but with members of the crew falling overboard thanks to drugs, violence, poverty and the rough seas the literary establishment -- especially in New York -- stirred up to make sure the Beats stayed marginalized, perhaps it's no wonder Jack wound up dispirited and broken.
As for On The Road -- I would be fatuous if I said "it needs and editor." It's probably overrated a bit, but what does that matter at this point -- it's practically The Book Of Kells of the Beat movement, with acolytes still worshiping at it's pages. And it still bugs the establishment, so the Beat dream goes on. But I prefer the early more pure stuff like Dr. Sax, Maggie Cassidy, etc., etc. Stuff written when Kerouac was still just Jack and not "The King Of The Beats.""
"EDIT: So I thought I didn't do it justice by listening to it so am now reading it.
Kinda skipped the discussion of the scroll.
Kerouac has a lovely sense of description and is a good storyteller. That said, I enjoyed reading and listening to his first journey to and from California.
I'm slugging through the second trip right now. I think I don't enjoy it because they are stealing from everyone, freeloading and dirty. It most definitely feels like I'm listening to some entitled, arrogant hipster talk about his roadtrip.
I'm also tired of learning that an author wrote the entire book in less than a month hopped up on some drug. Seriously, that is getting boring.
I'm mid book now and fairly over it.
***** Actually, I didn't read it but listened to it as an audiobook. Matt Dillon does a phenomenal job reading. I loved the part where he was in the Central California because I was driving through it when he was narrating but I spent most of the book feeling like I overhearing some dirty artsy hipster boy talk about his weekend. I listened to him start his second trip to the West Coast then stopped caring anymore."
"Having read "On the Road" years ago and briefly fallen in love with it like everybody else before realizing how unrewarding its claims are, I finally made my way through the entanglements of the original scroll, which is much better than the published book insofar as we get the real names and no censorship (I believe the scene where Neil bangs their male driver in a hotel room was left out of the original book, for instance). But the unedited scroll is a rough and tumble bramble bush of repetitive ideas and imaginative wanderings-kind of like the original, you might interrupt, only it's easier to see in this version. I stopped counting how many times I read the word "sorrow" or "awful", or a related derivative. The scroll seemed, after all these years, like a collection of sorrowful awful experiences that we are to believe were, in their time, quite beautiful. I'm not sure what it was that prompted this, after all I loved the book the first time I read it, and Kerouac dazzles now and then in the scroll, but not before petering out into a stream of mystical exhaust. The best parts of this book make themselves known clearly and mostly early on. Kerouac's descriptive prose is bar none, the book literally smells like Chinese food in the San Francisco portion. I can taste the beer in the jazz clubs. However drunk I became there was a mounting and sobering sense that these guys had no idea what was going on around them. It came to a head in Mexico. They cruise through small "dobe" towns with Neal annoyingly telling Jack how cool poverty is. Summations are made about the Mexican people and their ancient civilization of wonder and awe, but they arrive at this theory after talking to a grand total of three Mexicans. Not exactly Tocqueville in the reporting.
Still, it's difficult to not feel cozy about Kerouac. As the book winds to an end, and that last famous paragraph begins "In America when the sun goes down" you let out a sigh for all the miles traveled and the long lands traversed. In the end, you might not be in love with it anymore, but you'll think about it from time to time."
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