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Finally, as mentioned above, Kerouac based this on his life While listed as fiction, up until the final draft, the main characters had real names. The draft the Kerouac used was on long scroll without formatting or paragraph breaks. I mentioned the jazz influence and Kerouac apparently used the scroll in this way to mimic improvisational jazz. Sometimes the scroll can be seen on display - see photo below: This novel deserves to lounge around in a five star hotel rather than languish in a lone star saloon. O'Hagan, Sean (August 5, 2007). "America's First King of the Road". The Guardian. London . Retrieved May 20, 2010. From the get go, this is a stream of consciousness romp through North America. It seems like almost every city in the United States is mentioned at least once as Sal Paradise tells of his travels, the people he meets, those who join him, and his wild vagabond companion Dean Moriarity. I don't feel like the style of this book will appeal to everyone and I can easily see many losing interest part way in. But, if you are a fan of travelling in America, a scholar of literary genres, a hipster, and/or grew up in the 50s travelling the great American highways before interstates, you will find something in here for you.
I do wonder about the real life Dean Moriarty. Did you realize that he was the bus driver in Wolfe's Electric Kool-aid Acid Test as well as mentioned in several Grateful Dead songs? Something about that guy really insprired the artisits around him. In terms of geographical sweep, the narrative covers nearly the whole of America in the 50s weaving its way in and out of Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco and many other major American cities. Through the eyes of Salvatore 'Sal' Paradise, a professional bum, we are given an extended peek into the lives of a band of merry have-nots, their hapless trysts with women, booze, drugs, homelessness, destitution, jazz as they hitchhike and motor their way through the heart of America. Here’s the thing : there’s a time to read Kerouac, and it’s not your thirties. I first read “On the Road” when I was 19 and I loved how meandering and crazy it was… and in retrospect, I know it’s because I was similarly scattered and unhinged. When one’s in that headspace, it’s natural to appreciate that there’s a classic out there that captures the sort of spontaneous madness that most people only experience in the first half of their twenties. I re-read it when I was twenty-two, and I still thought it was brilliant. Reading it at thirty-three made me cringe way more than I had imagined it would…In the six years that passed between the composition and publication of On the Road, Kerouac traveled extensively, experimented with Buddhism and wrote many novels that went unpublished at the time. His next published novel, The Dharma Bums (1958), described Kerouac's clumsy steps toward spiritual enlightenment on a mountain climb with friend Gary Snyder, a Zen poet. Dharma was followed that same year by the novel The Subterraneans, and in 1959, Kerouac published three novels: Dr. Sax, Mexico City Blues and Maggie Cassidy. However, I think the point he was making (if not, then the point I am making) is that most of life is ephemeral. It just happens and it's gone forever. Giroux subsequently rejected On the Road in 1951, and all other Kerouac novels submitted to him over the years. The 1951 rejection of On the Road effectively ended Kerouac's personal and professional relationship with Giroux, whom he had considered a friend, and his professional relationship with Harcourt Brace. It would be another six years before he was again published professionally, when Viking published On the Road at the urging of Malcolm Cowley. We omit to specify that Kerouac had been working on this novel for two or even three years and that it was in a mad frenzy (doped with coffee!) He wrote this roll in one go after gluing each sheet individually. Of paper to make a single strip, thus assimilating it to the mythical route of Route 66, the one that crosses the USA from east to west; continuous reading, without the shadow of a paragraph, is perhaps a parallel with the monotony of this route 66 but that its text is long, long.
Mr. ALLEN GINSBERG (Poet): When I went to Kerouac's house once, and I'd been revising my poem, and he said, stop revising. Kerouac even delves into the classical music genre briefly, having Sal attend a performance of Beethoven's sole opera, Fidelio (1805), in Central City, Colorado, as performed by "stars of the Metropolitan" who are visiting the area for the summer (Pt. 1, Ch. 9).The following year, in 1940, Kerouac began his freshman year as a football player and aspiring writer at Columbia University. However, he broke his leg in one of his first games and was relegated to the sidelines for the rest of the season. Although his leg had healed, Kerouac's coach refused to let him play the next year, and Kerouac impulsively quit the team and dropped out of college. He spent the next year working odd jobs and trying to figure out what to make of his life. He spent a few months pumping gas in Hartford, Connecticut. Then he hopped a bus to Washington, D.C., and worked on a construction crew building the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Eventually, Kerouac decided to join the military to fight for his country in World War II. He enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1943, but was honorably discharged after only 10 days of service for what his medical report described as "strong schizoid trends." Spring-Summer 1957, The Paris Review, Number 16, Truman Capote, The Art of Fiction No. 17, Interviewed by Pati Hill, Paris Review, Inc., Flushing, New York. (Online archive of The Paris Review at theparisreview.org; accessed March 27, 2016) link
Because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars...”
The review from Time exhibited a similar sentiment. "The post-World War II generation—beat or beatific—has not found symbolic spokesmen with anywhere near the talents of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or Nathanael West. In this novel, talented Author Kerouac, 35, does not join that literary league, either, but at least suggests that his generation is not silent. With his barbaric yawp of a book, Kerouac commands attention as a kind of literary James Dean." [21] It considers the book partly a travel book and partly a collection of journal jottings. While Kerouac sees his characters as "mad to live ... desirous of everything at the same time," the reviewer likens them to cases of "psychosis that is a variety of Ganser Syndrome" who "aren't really mad—they only seem to be." [21] Critical study [ edit ]
Like most legends, the story of the whirlwind composition of On the Road is part fact and part fiction. Kerouac did, in fact, write the novel on a single scroll in three weeks, but he had also spent several years making notes in preparation for this literary outburst. Kerouac termed this style of writing "spontaneous prose" and compared it to the improvisation of his beloved jazz musicians. Revision, he believed, was akin to lying and detracted from the ability of prose to capture the truth of a moment. Kerouac endured a childhood tragedy in the summer of 1926 when his beloved older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine. Drowning in grief, the Kerouac family embraced their Catholic faith more deeply. Kerouac's writing is full of vivid memories of attending church as a child: "From the open door of the church warm and golden light swarmed out on the snow. The sound of the organ and singing could be heard." Supernatural' and 'Timeless' creator Eric Kripke details the real-life inspirations behind his fantasy series". Los Angeles Times. 2018-12-19 . Retrieved 2021-05-10. a b Carden, Mary Pannicia (2009). Hilary Holladay and Robert Holton (ed.). " 'Adventures in Auto-Eroticism': Economies of Traveling Masculinity in On the Road and The First Third". What's Your Road, Man?. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press: 169–185.Rpt. in Lee, Michelle (2009). Poetry Criticism (subscription required). Vol. 95. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2015. ISBN 9781414451848. After seeing Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Coppola appointed Salles to direct the movie. [35] In preparation for the film, Salles traveled the United States, tracing Kerouac's journey and filming a documentary on the search for On the Road. [36] Sam Riley starred as Sal Paradise. Garrett Hedlund portrayed Dean Moriarty. [36] Kristen Stewart played Mary Lou. [37] Kirsten Dunst portrayed Camille. [38] The film screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012 [39] and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. [40] The entire book is some form of “Hey, man. That’s cool. That’s right. Cool. It’s all cool. Let’s go find some girls. Let’s talk about talking. Let’s hitch a ride.” Nothing happened.
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