First of all, I found On the Road really easy to read. I actually read it in one afternoon. I didn't intend to, but I found the prose really easy to speed through and it just kind of happened that way. I was happy to find that the prose and style weren't written in some sort of pretentious tone that I find most classics are written in, and that's why we're supposed to bow down to them. It also wasn't as hard to follow as I expected it to be. I loved The Bell Jar, but it was super hard to follow. The same with Play It As It Lays; super easy to blow through, but hard as hell to follow. On the Road was none of these, and for that I am grateful. But, above all, I feel like the prose isn't exactly writing; it's just words strung together relaying some sort of turn of events. I guess some might classify this as writing, but to me, Kerouac's style was lacking something to make it more interesting. Not that it was boring, but it was just lacking something that I can't exactly put my finger on.
So, my feelings towards On the Road were fairly mixed once I finished it. When this happens, I usually put my faith into the trusty Goodreads to see what other people thought. Let me just say that the Goodreads reviews for this book were by far the funniest I've ever seen. It went from "this book completely changed my life", to "Kerouac and On the Road are a complete narcissistic and paternalistic piece of garbage", to (my personal favorite) "this book gives me anxiety attacks on sleepless nights". Personally, I can't agree with the people who call On the Road a narcissistic and paternalistic piece of garbage. Even though it's about people, beatniks of the Beat generation, "on the road", careless and fancy-free, you have to remember that this took place in the early 1950s. Even those who broke out of social norms were still strained by them, at least from our modern perspective. So, yes, On the Road's narrator, Sal, is at times very ignorant and paternalistic. But hey, it's the 50s and he's a white man; honestly, what were you expecting? I think the book does have a lot of aspects that are clearly outdated, but again, that is kind of the point. You're reading a book that is, essentially, about the origins of the hippie movement. Things are not the same in present day.
I managed to overlook and even chuckle at the outdated social norms in On the Road. But, if I may join the critics who judge it too harshly based on that for just a second, I would have enjoyed it so much more if Sal, the narrator, had recognized his feelings for Dean Moriarty, the beatnik who essentially inspires Sal to go out on the road. The way Sal continuously talks about Dean... I'm sorry. From my modern perspective, there were feelings there. It's a shame it couldn't have happened. This is your modern book critic who tries to make every fictional man gay signing off now. 3.5/5 stars.
(I love this quote, even though it will always remind me of a high school English teacher that I despised who completely overused it.)
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