Well you might have noticed that I've not blogged of late, and that is because On the Road is a battle to get through. I've been reading it for over 6 weeks, which considering it is just under 300 pages long, is ridiculous - but I think tells you something about my feelings on it. It did not grip me. At all.
So where to start? On the Road follows Sal Paradise- a supposedly ironic name which is too pedestrian to mention - on a road trip adventure across America, encountering a variety of characters and tedious situations, looking for fun and finding none. All funded by his poor old Aunt.
As a forerunner of 'beat' literature, at the time of publishing this was considered a groundbreaking novel. I've read beat literature before and I find it self indulgent rambling, often lacking in plot and characterisation, and this is exactly what On the Road is. There are so many characters that they are not only hard to keep track of but they are not given any background or history and you really don't care about them at all. Sal and whoever he happens to be travelling with, moan about their lives, get drunk, get high and find girls. Then drive somewhere else, zig zagging across the country and do more of the same. Repeat until end. They hit on every woman they find, occasionally marry them, then leave them for the road again. Niiiice. The way they treat women throughout is awful, they are either sex objects or a bank to fund their travels.
There are certain times and scenarios in the book which are fairly interesting, almost like short stories within the novel. But these are limited and sparse. There was absolutely no pull for me to pick this book up and I was reading because I had to rather than wanting to.
The overwhelming feeling I felt when I finished this was relief. If you are contemplating reading it I really wouldn't bother, unless you like books without a plot and with two dimensional characters. The whole book has a somber undertone to it, as the characters constantly search for fun whilst actually having very little of it. Saying that I am intrigued to see the forthcoming film, not because I want to see how this translates on screen, but to see if they actually manage to pull some sort of a plot out of the bag which I totally missed.
So let that be a lesson kids - life and happiness are not found on the road getting pissed. And novels are not good when they don't have a plot.
I read this when I was 19 and my main memory of it is of never-ending scenery and paper-thin characters. Genuinely couldn't understand what the fuss was about.
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