On the Road

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Note about the kindle version - it crashes Paperwhites, but is great on a Fire tablet: --------------The kindle version of this book (On the Road: The Original Scroll) crashes and freezes when I read it on a Paperwhite. I tried it on two different Paperwhites (one is being returned for screen issues, the other is its replacement) and it did the same thing on both.Towards the end of the book, after reading 10 pages or so, the screen turns white and sometimes launches a restart and other times just freezes for a long time. Customer service had me "permanently delete" the book as a way of solving the issue, but after they restored the purchase, the problem persists.Fortunately, I was reading it on a fire tablet as well which, as I explain below, is almost the only way in which the book should be read. -----------------------------------------------I first read this book (as originally published, not the scroll) as required reading in an English class. Unfortunately, I remember pretty much zero about it, so my guess is that I either skimmed it or read the SparkNotes version. If that sounds familiar, then I urge you to revisit this book and really, honestly, actually read it.The older version of the book I "read" used pseudonyms for the Beat writer characters who appeared in it. Even if I had had any idea who William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and other Beat writers were at the time, I likely wouldn't have been able to figure out which character was which. In this version, the pseudonyms are gone, the characters are who they are, often described in brutal and uncompromising terms, which frankly makes for a far more interesting read.[A word of caution, however, is in order - maybe several - owing to the casual use of disparaging language, as well as to the inclusion of material that was cut from the originally published version because it was deemed to be too pornographic.]I highly recommend reading it on a device that allows page scrolling. The reason for this is that Kerouac wrote the manuscript for this book on a single piece of paper, which in this case was a 120-foot-long scroll that he fashioned by taping pieces of paper together. It was typed single-spaced, without margins or paragraph breaks, so it's a rather remarkable thing to be able to read it just as he wrote it.(Just as an FYI, my kindle paperwhite does not have page-scrolling capability nor do most other kindle readers as I have been told, neither does the kindle app on my laptop, but the kindle fire accommodates page scrolling, as does the kindle app on my phone.)Whichever way you choose to read the book will be worth it. It's an insider's view into the world of the ' highest echelons of the Beat writers - their young lives and how they became who they eventually became in spite of their numerous personal flaws. It's also incredible look at America in the late 1940s from Kerouac's point of view as a hitchhiker who goes cross-country with barely two nickels to rub together and never knowing what the new day or next mile will hold. It was somewhat amazing to realize that people could hook up with their friends in completely strange cities, and even out in the wilds of Texas, without having cell phones!This book is shot through with incredibly beautiful passages. Of traveling through California's central valley, he writes:"Soon it got dusk, a grape dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries. I stuck my head out the window and took deep breaths of the fragrant air. It was the most beautiful of all moments."The book is also very funny which stems, I think, from Kerouac's self-deprecating honesty about the often crazy and improbable situations in which he finds himself over and over again, as well as from his descriptions of people and places that he lays out as just he sees them. But no matter what was happening, I found myself completely wrapped up in the narrative of Kerouac's travels and his travails, and by the weird charm of Kerouac himself.This is a book well worth reading, or re-reading, especially if "the original scroll" was not the version that was read before. It has a permanent place on my shelf of personal classics.I do not recommend reading it on kindle readers because of my very frustrating experience with that.

On the Road has been interpreted, debated over and, ironically enough, turned into an engine of capitalism in the fifty some years since it was published. This clash of interpretations is because Kerouac wasn’t writing an adventure story, as it is often read, but a character study of one of the most interesting individuals in modern literature.While ostensibly the story of Sal Paradise’s adventures across North America, the real focus of the book is on the other central character Dean Moriarty. Sal is fascinated, almost obsessively, with Dean as soon as he meets him. To those who know him only casually, Dean seems like a conman. He works and fudges his way towards enough money to sustain drinking, womanizing and, above all, traveling. All the while he leaves behind a string of heartbroken women and fatherless children across the US. And yet this conman fascinates the more responsible Sal so much that he spends several years of his life following him around trying to understand how Dean seems to know the secret of life.And, according to the author, Dean really does know the secret, or better put, lack thereof. Dean simply lives life in the moment. He isn’t moral and he isn’t immoral. He is more amoral-he simply doesn’t think in those categories. He isn’t religious but he has a strange religious sense about him. More Eastern than Western he sees the life of work, marriage and responsibility as mostly an illusion to be fled from.This attitude towards life, this simply to be fully alive every second, can’t be put into so many words. That’s why Dean is forever talking about someone getting IT. IT is simply this sense of living at its utmost that seems like such a banal insight unless expressed as lived in a person like Dean Moriarty.And this understanding of life comes with an understandable sadness since human life is always finite. Hence the dichotomy between Dean fully feeling IT and his often expressed melancholy.To be honest, I don’t share Kerouac’s enamor with Dean Moriarty. But then I’m married, work in an office and have a mortgage to meet. Perhaps Kerouac wouldn’t have been so enamored with my choices.Regardless, the book is a deserved classic for espousing a way of life that people around the world aspire to attain. One can condemn, belittle or otherwise reject this life but it rarely has been better sold. A must read for all who want to understand the type of life many modern people try to imitate.