In Warren's Words

Kerouac and His Road to Nowhere

I recently read the 1957 novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac for the first time. As everybody knows it has been mythologized as the spark that ignited the so-called cultural curiosity known as the Beat Generation and has been venerated as an icon in the literary firmament.

Sorry, Jack, I didn’t get it.

Clearly biographical, it tells the story of a group of dysfunctional, drug-popping, self-indulgent alcoholic misfits who traveled aimlessly across America, rootless and clueless, with no apparent motivation or goals other than to float blissfully stoned toward nothingness.

Supposedly, as social pundits of the era and beyond have declared, the book was the instructional pamphlet that provided the bomb making know-how that set off the sixties explosion that changed America forever.  Or so all the exaggerated hoopla has alleged and made Kerouac an icon who has had, so far, a fifty-year run and is still going strong.

Indeed, the New York Times recently published a story about Kerouac tracing his subway ride from Ozone Park, Long Island, as he began the first phase of his journey, which inspired the novel. I have long believed that there is such a thing as a “media virus” that once propagated invades the information bloodstream and populates every vein and capillary of the collective psyche. In Kerouac’s case, the half-life of this virus has been remarkably prolonged.

Media throughout the country, including the New York Times, are trumpeting the 50th anniversary of On the Road as if it were some sacred text on the order of the Bible.

Few contemporary authors have had this kind of post mortem endurance for their work and I applaud its long life for no other reason that it’s, well, long. No one can ever predict the future and durability of an author’s offering and I celebrate the good fortune of the Kerouac estate and the great satisfaction it must give to the ghostly spirit of the author, if such an entity exists.

I suspect that the major reason for the book’s longevity and the author’s sainted memory is because the book is assigned in many college English college courses, taught by those who remember this era with fond nostalgia, when their youthful exuberance led to a sense of rebellion fueled by drugs, excessive pocket money and the joys of pre-AIDS, post birth control pill, sexual freedom and the thrills of mayhem and protest. After all, this is their last chance to brand themselves as the real, the bona fide “greatest generation.” I’ll stick with the Brokaw version. 

Media throughout the country, including the New York Times, are trumpeting the 50th anniversary of On the Road as if it were some sacred text on the order of the Bible.

To be fair, perhaps I didn’t get it because I was born too soon. I am a depression baby and was married and scratching to earn a living to support my wife and kids when Kerouac was meandering on the road to nowhere in his pharmaceutical swoon. The fact is that I, along with the other born-too-sooners, missed the various revolutions of the sixties, the wide-open sexual stuff, the pot and acid binges, the Woodstock party and related orgies of that devil-may-care much celebrated historical moment.

I watched all this transpire from afar, alas not out of envy, but as a kind of distant road show that hardly made a dent in my own husbandly and parental pursuits. While Jack was hooting it up on the road, I was busy helping with the family chores, changing diapers, baby sitting, and concentrating my energies to put bread on the family table. It occurred to me, even then, that the party participants must have been mostly privileged kids out on a tear who could afford the drop out time. I couldn’t.

Then, of course, there was the Vietnam War, which was in full dudgeon while the party went on. Many of the male partygoers had the good fortune to game the system and stay out of harm’s way.  There was, after all, a vast inequity in the way patriotic responsibility was doled out. There still is. 

Perhaps I didn’t get it because I grew up in an atmosphere of striving and responsibility in the bosom of a caring and loving extended family to whom economic survival was a compelling need and educational goals paramount as steps in the ladder to rise in American society. Rising meant taking advantage of opportunity, learning to compete, and pursuing one’s hopes and dreams. Our planned trajectory was upwardly mobile, time bound and disciplined.

Perhaps it was all these things that Kerouac and his befuddled buddies were against, rebels against all forms of order, addicted to chaos and mind numbing substances to remove the heavy load of responsibility from their lives.  I can understand that. Life is a warrior’s struggle and American society can be unforgiving for those who can’t meet the challenge. 

But the great irony to me is that the mostly privileged generation that participated in the great party of the sixties has wound up in the exact same place where I found myself when Kerouac was hoboing around the country. The generational bash is over now and its participants are into striving, achievement and responsibility and they are trying to push their kids into a similar mode.

The generational bash is over now and its participants are into striving, achievement and responsibility and they are trying to push their kids into a similar mode.

They accepted the challenge of the competition, goading their kids to have an edge in the game by going to the best schools that money can buy, and are somewhat paranoid about the fear their offspring might bump their heads on the ceiling of upward mobility,

Their focus is on life extension through healthy living, healthy eating, and a lot less binging on booze and drugs. Unlike Kerouac and his pals, they’re more careful about their own chemical addictions and frightened to death their kids will pick up life stifling drug habits. It is no secret that Kerouac died of his addictive excesses at age forty-seven. Too bad. I’d like to have had his response to my critique.

The problem for me is extracting Kerouac’s book from its mythology. Whether or not it set off the sixties mindset or not is debatable. Many social critics think so and have lavished much praise on its merit as both a literary offering and a cultural milestone, which must make me, at the very least, seem to them like an ingrate.

Sorry, Jack, to me the book was, to be kind, somewhat less than interesting. So what?  It’s only one guy’s opinion. In terms of a novel’s endurance, you hit a grand slam.

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