ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac

Reviewed by Lira Samanta

Who doesn’t like On the Road? I can’t think of anyone who has read this Beat Generation novel and not loved it whole-heartedly. Perennial in its popularity ever since its publication in 1957, On the Road has been hailed as the visionary novel for young men and women throughout America, who, upon reading it, have been themselves been inspired to take to the road and embark on glorious, dirty travels. The beloved, uniquely American Jack Kerouac weaves a fast, caffeinated tale, which gets into the reader’s heart and lungs. An interesting fact about this novel is that its first draft was written in a week. An interesting observation about this novel is that it is almost universally found to be impossible to read during anytime other than the summer.

The summer is a two-to-three months’ block of sweat and sluggishness. It is the time of the year when bored teenagers pick up well-acclaimed novels out of a lack of anything better to do. And as soon as On the Road begins for them, their hearts start beating to the drum of the maverick Beat Generation, pun well intended. They fall in love with Dean Moriarty, wanting so badly to be close to him—Dean, the reckless but competent driver, the ridiculously alive man who needs very little sleep and very many women to get by in life. Even a cloistered nun would feel some tugging in the depths of her human heart that pulls her towards accompanying this fast-living, fast-breathing man on a road trip across an old terrain, but with a giddily young heart.

This novel spins one as though one were a zooming unpaired electron in an incomplete valence shell. Which is, to un-nerdily put it, very fast. One gets observably dizzy in the head as one progresses through the chapters. A favorite of mine is when the narrator, Sal, along with a few other passengers, rides in a limousine, with Dean Moriarty driving them all. Dean zooms down the wrong side of the road to pass a vehicle, only to encounter an oncoming truck, and then—

I’m not one to sneak spoilers into a book review. Read On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, to find out. It’s well worth it.