In Defense of the Books You Hate: On the Road

I’ve had some fun at Jack Kerouac’s expense here and here, but I have to admit I’d never actually read the man until this past week. The Subterraneans  has been sitting on my shelf, unread, for about 10 years because I’ve always wanted to make that first Kerouac plunge with On the Road.  With the film adaptation of the book coming out this month, I finally got my hands on a copy. Still, the mild curiosity I’ve always held about On the Road  was balanced by a healthy dose of skepticism about a book that seems to inspire more scoffing than praise these days.

Truman Capote once panned Kerouac’s ‘spontaneous prose’ by saying, “It isn’t writing at all-it’s typing.” John Updike famously parodied On the Road  in a New Yorker  hit piece called “On the Sidewalk,” in which two kids on a tricycle and a scooter ride off “into the wide shimmering pavement” through a bed of irises. At the end of the story it is revealed that the childish main character is actually 39- right about Kerouac’s age at the time. Updike’s lambast even got a mention in Kerouac’s New York Times obituary.

But more striking to me than either of these criticisms is the literatti’s collective dismissal of On the Road  as a childish romp fit only for the trash heap- the same one where they’ve thrown their old copies of Catcher in the Rye  and Atlas Shrugged  and any other books that tend to cast a spell on the under-twenty crowd. In their wisdom and erudition, they prove that they've outgrown the aimless, childish exuberance of On the Road  by smiling quaintly at anyone who sees it for more than a youngster’s literary rite of passage.

What a crock. This is a book that left me absolutely buzzing- and I say that as a pretty conservative 34-year-old father of three. Let’s tackle the writing first. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book with such a palpable current to it. I don’t mean to say it’s a page-turner that will keep you up all night, yet each time you wade in, you find yourself swept away in  Kerouac’s captivating river of prose.

His vivid descriptions force the reader to step back and look at things in new and unexpected ways. Instead of putting his finger on Hemingway’s ‘mot juste-’ the one, true word that perfectly describes the situation at hand, Kerouac just hurls a bunch of them at you, each with its own angle, its own color, and its own flavor. So, for example, a simple phrase like “sad characters” becomes “poignant California characters with their end-of-the-continent sadness.” Pretty great, right? To me, this style is not flighty or reckless- it’s like gazing through an ever-changing kaleidoscope. And it's downright mesmerizing.

But how about the story? Isn’t it just a loser’s travel log? A bum’s manifesto? Or a hap-hazard, hedonistic attack on American social norms? If you choose to look at it that way, I guess it is. In his New York Times review, David Dempsey wrote: 

“As a portrait of a disjointed segment of society acting out of its own neurotic necessity, On the Road,  is a stunning achievement. But it is a road, as far as the characters are concerned, that leads to nowhere.”

I think he’s right, actually.  But I think that’s the whole point. The book is infused with an emptiness and a sadness that seems to come to a crescendo at the end. Despite Sal’s book-length fixation on Dean (or Kerouac’s lifelong fixation on Neal Cassady, on whom Dean was based), I read On the Road  to be a pretty pointed criticism, at least in part, of Dean’s manic search for ‘IT’ that left friendships, marriages and even children in its ruinous wake. 


And that’s not an accidental message. He foreshadows it in the first few pages, builds on it with MaryLou’s, Camille’s and Inez’s experience, and ends the book with his own abandonment, delirious and sick, in Mexico. That, to me, is what makes On the Road  so much more than a bohemian travel log. It’s equal parts documentation, celebration, and condemnation of the sometimes misguided rebellion of Kerouac’s generation.

At the end of the day, appreciating On the Road  doesn’t make you a shiftless beat generation wannabe, any more than appreciating Lolita  makes you a warped child molester. Read it for what it is, and by all means enjoy the ride.

In Defense of the Books You Hate: Catcher in the Rye

Tucker got me thinking about Catcher in the Rye the other day, and I left a comment voicing one of my pet peeves.

I can’t stand it when people hate things just because they become popular. I mean, I get it. We all like to be in on the ground floor. We all like to be curators of our own little pop culture universe. But if you ask me, there are few things stupider than yelling “sell-out” just because someone you don’t like happens to like something you liked first. A good indie rock band can be absolutely ruined for some folks, for no other reason than that their songs finally get airtime on mainstream radio stations. What a joke.

I’ve read enough crap commentary about Catcher in the Rye to know that it’s one of those books that people just love to hate. It’s a simple-minded creation. Holden’s a self-centered, whiny little pipsqueak. Nothing really happens in the story. Why are we celebrating this dope? But when it comes right down to it, where’s all this vitriol coming from?

My guess it’s one of those books most people love as a teenager, but one which you’re supposed to “out-grow” once you get a little life-experience under your belt. I just don’t get it. Nobody’s saying it’s got to be your favorite book, but let’s recognize it for what it is. It gives us one of the most memorable narrator’s voices of all time. In fact, on that score, I’d rank it in slot number one. It’s a book that continues to resonate with generation after generation, despite an avalanche of arrogant dismissals by the well-read masses. -And I’m no died-in-the-wool, angst-ridden teen- I say all this as someone who didn’t pick the book up until my thirties.

Here are just two passages that caused me no small embarrassment when they produced involuntary, audible guffaws on-board a packed airplane:

I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself. I can’t really tap-dance or anything, but it was a stone floor in the can, and it was good for tap-dancing. I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang out of imitating them. Old Stradlater watched me in the mirror while he was shaving. All I need’s an audience. I’m an exhibitionist. “I’m the goddam Governor’s son,” I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap-dancing all over the place. “He doesn’t want me to be a tap-dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it’s in my goddam blood, tap-dancing.” Old Stradlater laughed. He didn’t have too bad a sense of humor. “It’s the opening night of the Ziegfield Follies.” I was getting out of breath. I have hardly any wind at all. “The leading man can’t go on. He’s drunk as a bastard. So who do they get to take his place? Me, that’s who. The little old goddam Governor’s son.”

“All of a sudden- for no good reason, really, except that I was sort of in the mood for horsing around- I felt like jumping off the washbowl and getting old Stradlater in a half nelson. That’s a wrestling hold, in case you don’t know, where you get the other guy around the neck and choke him to death, if you feel like it. I landed on him like a goddam panther.”

Now, you may not have relied on such random feats of stupidity for laughs when you were young, but it sounds an awful lot like a million moments of boredom I passed with my highschool friends.  And just because I haven’t pulled a half nelson on anyone in the last twenty years doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring true. It’s a veritable work of genius, and if I had written it, I’d probably be just as likely as Salinger to hole up in New Hampshire for the rest of my life for fear of never producing its equal. It’s that good. Run, don’t walk…