It’s June, the days are sultry, and the wanderlust sets in. But since summer travel is not in my plans this year, I decided to read On the Road. Or re-read. I’m not really sure. Jack Kerouac’s beat novel is so endemic to American culture in the second half of the twentieth century, it’s one of those books we know even if we never read it. I read it recently and I’m still not sure if I had read it previously. It felt familiar.
I know I’ve read other Kerouac, so it only makes sense that I surely read On the Road years ago. An early ‘60s television series, “Route 66,” was inspired by On the Road; I watched it when I was barely in elementary school and, for third grade me, it defined what it meant to be “cool,” for better or worse. So my references for On the Road predate my knowledge that there was a book by that name.
For the record, The Subterraneans is still my favorite Kerouac book. I lent so many copies of The Subterraneans that were never returned that the last time I bought it, I bought two copies so I would be sure to have at least one copy in my library. I did lend out that other copy and, of course, it was never returned.
The impetus for my recent reading of On the Road was a book about the Grateful Dead. Here Beside the Rising Tide by Jim Newton purports to be a biography of Jerry Garcia, but it really becomes a chronicle of the counterculture of Garcia’s time. While reading it, Neal Cassady’s name occasionally popped up and set me to thinking about On the Road. Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty in On the Road and other books is a barely disguised version of the author’s buddy, Neal Cassady, who was a muse for the Beat writers and is iconic in ’50s and ’60s counterculture. He drove the bus for Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, for which the Grateful Dead was the house band (bus band?). The Grateful Dead song “Cassidy” is the first song I want to hear when a member of the Dead passes on; even though the song’s namesake is the daughter of a Grateful Dead roadie, Neal Cassady is present in the lyrics.
So, I just finished reading On the Road, perhaps for the first time. And I really like it, again maybe. But I have issues: I have always thought of Neal Cassady as one of my counterculture heroes, but I really got tired and annoyed with Dean Moriarty while reading the book (“Yass! Man! Go! Go! Phew! Yass! Ahem! …”). I knew guys like Cassady, mainly in college and grad school. I enjoyed hanging with them back then, as I recall. You might know the type: frantic, charismatic, a maverick, always on the make and take, womanizer, manizer, pretentious in an aw shucks way, in their seventh year of working toward a B.A. in philosophy. They’re fun but tend to get boring and tiresome and you just want them to shut up sometimes. Or, better yet, go away for a while.
I get the sense at times that Sal Paradise, the book’s Kerouac stand-in, feels that way about Dean. Sal hangs and goes the distance with Dean throughout the book. He misses Dean when he’s not there. Sal clearly wants Dean’s approval, but he doesn’t always present him in the most flattering terms. I’m reminded of a friend of mine who was raised in a very middle of the road Midwest family. Occasionally, though, he tried to take a walk on the wild side, or at least visit it. He told me once that every morning as he looked in the bathroom mirror, he said to himself Don’t be shocked by anything that happens today. I can imagine Sal Paradise doing that, but he’d never reveal it.
From a twenty-first century perspective, it’s hard to know where to even start in terms of On the Road’s treatment of women. It’s staggering to realize that there was a time fairly recently when those sorts of attitude toward women would have been deemed acceptable on any level. You might say Well it’s a product of a different time and a different mindset. But then, you look around and see what’s happening around us today – among the billionaires on private islands, at the Pentagon, on the grounds of the UFC next door to what used to be “the People’s House” – and maybe the mindset hasn’t changed so much after all. I’m sorry to get all wound up: I just read a pastor’s letter “explaining” why women shouldn’t be allowed behind the pulpit. My irritation is deep. I’m keeping the faith but losing my religion.
Perhaps my reaction to Dean Moriarty and the rest is just the collateral damage of maturity. I’m sure I didn’t feel such reservations when I first knew of Cassady and read Kerouac and the Beats. In a recent column, octogenarian Garrison Keillor writes, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a gas, gas, gas is all well and good when you’re in your twenties but when the Stones come back fifty years later and fans with walkers and canes are dancing, is this something we really need to see?” I see what he means.
But when all is said and done, I really enjoyed reading On the Road. Yes, despite everything.
You dig? Cool! Ahem.
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