The idea that Jack Kerouac is a great American writer and that On the Road is a great American novel has been an on going and relentless and relentless hard sell by his publishers and those who own the copyrights on his books ever since I can remember, certainly since I first encountered his name in high school. One read the books one was supposed to in one’s teens—Slaughterhouse 5, Steppenwolfe, Naked Lunch—and however much one might have changed their estimation of their youthful heroes, one was also expected to hold their first opinion of Kerouac and his particular book for all the time. One only grew to love it more over the decades, so the gestalt went, and it was unthinkable that a literate person from the boomer generation would have less than glorious things to say about Kerouac and the revolution he inspired. But all this is too much, and enough already. I never liked the novel, I never cared for Kerouac, although I lied that I liked him in deference to peer pressure and the prospects of scoring with hip young girls I wanted to bed, but it was a lie extracting a cost, and now I say that one might write an article of those who didn’t care for Kerouac, thought him a mediocre scribe, a balled-up novelist, an indulgent alkie putz you crossed the street if you coming toward you.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac was a book I detested when I read in high school, and it remains the most over rated book by an American writer I've encountered. There are moments of real poetry here, yes, but the waxing and waning in dated and contrived hip argot was embarrassing to read through.

It was during a bloody argument about merits of Jack Kerouac's writing when the woman I was arguing with,a twenty five year old who planned to be a penniless , wine drinking mooch like her hero Jack told me
You know Ted, your very extreme opinion of him stinks of jealousy.

I have no reason to be jealous of a man who drank himself to death before the age of fifty while living with his mother. It is impossible to be jealous of a man who wrote so poorly. The truth is that after spending nearly
twenty years trying to accommodate Kerouac's work with by reading many of his books and a good many biographies and secondary sources about he and his fellow beats, I admitted to my innermost self that my gut instinct was right, Jack wasn't a good writer and that his continued popularity has more to do with a cultist hype that surrounds the work and persona of Ayn Rand; there's an invested interest in making sure that the author is always spoken of in the most regaling terms.

Others like me, cursed with literature degrees, broad readings and an appreciation of craft in the service of real inspiration, regale him far less, finding his writings charmless, undercooked, ill-prepared, all sizzle and no steak. Those willing to say that Kerouac's oeuvre was wholesale bullshit are in the minority, as the Jack Kerouac Industry shows no sign of slowing down. Every smoke stack is fired up, and what might have been clear skies are blackened all the more with his loopy circumlocutions.

I will actually defer to your opinion since I read the book as a child, and at the time of my life when reading it was most appropriate. I have nothing but fond memories because as a kid all I ever wanted to do was take a bunch of roadtrips places.

But what's next for Slate, an article about Judy Bloom?

You know Ted, I tend to agree with you, though I won't go so far as to say I detest the novel. It's a fun read (though Kerouac's other novels aren't nearly so fun).

Kerouac is sorta like Hemingway for the bohemian set, a writer with a persona that tends to outpace whatever talent he may have actually had, though I would insist that at least Hemingway backed up his self-mythologizing by being a truly great writer. It's the image and the lifestyle and all that stuff, and to Kerouac's credit, he at least didn't buy into it himself.

nice to learn a bit about your life.

but the word crap would have been sufficient.

i could never put up with the artsie craftsie women that affected a liking for the beats. you were that desperate to get layed?

I always thought that as a generation x'er that On the Road was just something I didn't get. "It must be a boomer thing," I thought.

I read the book after completing my first across the country road trip, from Alabama to San Francsico (a trip I would later repeat many, many times). I found the book to be just plain juvenile, the characters losers, and their existence shallow. Sure they were traveling, as I was, but they seemed intellectually incurius. I just didn't get it.

Later I lived in North Beach and was a regular at all the beat hang outs - they were just my local coffee houses, bars and book stores. It was then that I realized that the legend of Kerouac was all style (although a wonderful style, and a wonderful life style), but no substance.

Can't exactly disagree with you, in spite of the fact that I enjoyed the book when I read it in the late 60's and when I again reread it recently.

I do think that even by the late 60's, the book was dated, and the road he described was already long gone -- in spite of the attempts many of my peers made to rediscover it.

Kerouac probably was more style than substance, but damn, what style!

Others like me, cursed with literature degrees, broad readings and an appreciation of craft in the service of real inspiration, regale him far less, finding his writings charmless, undercooked, ill-prepared, all sizzle and no steak.

It felt so GOOD to read that. I was forcefed the same booklist in college, and felt that Kerouac insulted my intelligence. What a waste. I could not say that at the time -- had to protect the old 4.0 -- but I swear now I wonder how many of my classmates felt the same way.

I vote for an un-celebration of this 50th anniversary of crap.

Angel

Yes.As members of my college drinking club used to say, "you got more if you weren't picky." I wasn't a monster , be assured, but sometimes sincerity was sacrificed for personal advantage.

Wow, the woman who told you your view of Kerouac stank of jealousy was right! Hopefully you didn't beat her up too badly (you said the argument was "bloody," so I assume you came to blows).

I can see how someone who writes about "blackened skies" and steakless sizzle is threatened by Kerouac . . . every page of "On the Road" contains brilliant, original images that destroy the types of stereotypes and clichés that characterize your own writing.

Just out of curiosity, who do you, as the proud holder of a lit degree, consider to be a better writer than Kerouac? Who can match him for imagery and voice? Or better yet, maybe you can post some of your own literary writing . . . and then we can do a head to head comparison, you versus Jack.

Right, we'll just chalk it up to publicity, then, and ignore all of those reviewers, critics, other writers, and many, many readers who DON'T think it's "crap" then, shall we, Ted? After all, you're the great iconoclast here, so let's all follow YOU now, eh?

Your post seems more of a confession of your own shallowness, dishonesty, and resentment than any sort of analysis of Kerouac. It's as if he's responsible for your lying about your feelings about the book....that he's making everyone tout it as 'hip'....that he's the girlfriend who thinks you're a putz. Yep, it's all Jack, not you at all.

'Cursed with a literature degree, broad readings and an appreciation of craft in the service of real inspiration" as you are, you have every right to dislike him. Literature is certainly a matter of taste, as well as craft. But your denial seems more a matter of resentment than a matter of intellect, somehow.

Right, we'll just chalk it up to publicity, then, and ignore all of those reviewers, critics, other writers, and many, many readers who DON'T think it's "crap" then, shall we, Ted? After all, you're the great iconoclast here, so let's all follow YOU now, eh?

Follow your own lead, Horus, that is exactly the point. It's funny that some of us get antsy when Kerouac's legacy is challenged. In any event, I'm hardly alone among readers who've had enough of the uncritical attention Kerouac continues to get. No doubt this thread will be overwhelmed with lovers of Kerouac's work, but let it not be said that a dissenting vote wasn't cast when this curious coronation was taking place.

Your post seems more of a confession of your own shallowness, dishonesty, and resentment than any sort of analysis of Kerouac. It's as if he's responsible for your lying about your feelings about the book....that he's making everyone tout it as 'hip'....that he's the girlfriend who thinks you're a putz. Yep, it's all Jack, not you at all.

So much of what has passed as analysis and informed commentary on Kerouac's work has been in the form of undigested memoir and idealized recollection when the author would recall their first encounter with "On the Road" or "The Subterraneans" and how the experience changed their lives, changed the way they thought about experience, changed the very culture of American Life. Personal anecdotes and testimonials, at best, multiplied by decades, nearly all exhibiting soft thinking regarding Kerouac's skills as a writer.Such easy estimations of who I think are better , greater writers (Mailer, Pynchon, DeLillo,Gaddis) would be unacceptable to the demanding reader, Kerouac's critical reputation gets a pass. My compressed gripe, grumpy autobiography as much as condensed criticism, is personal, sure, but no more than the love notes Kerouac recieves from his fans. In this context, my squib is of no less value, and it still makes a point. And it's not all Jack, of course, otherwise I wouldn't have included that brief bit of pretending to like his writing for reasons extraneous to literary appreciation. I was petty, vain, insecure, the whole teenage/college freshman shot, but as fucked up as I was in my unintellectual use of Kerouac's name, it typifies what I think consumers of the counter culture name brands were actually doing, using the Beats, Buddhism, drugs and varying degrees of political cant to satisfy baser desires. What people saw in Kerouac wasn't literature or art but an invitation to indulge The Fuck Up Within.

Wow, the woman who told you your view of Kerouac stank of jealousy was right!

Accusing a critic of a favorite writer's work of being "jealous" is cheap, dishonest, and a dodge from the issue that's raised in the first place, that Kerouac was an over rated, over hyped, overexposed writer. If you think the man is a great writer, there's the expectation that his rumored genius would inspire to describe , in his defense, how his writing clicked with you and opened up a world you previously knew nothing about. But you didn't do that, and hurl the hollow"jealousy" charge, leaving yourself exposed as someone who cannot defend their juvenile taste in certain writers. Not jealous, friend, merely and profoundly fed up with several decades worth of cant and babble attesting to Kerouac's greatness , a marketing campaign aimed not at perpetuating counter culture values and spiritual individualism, but to make his publishers and the owners of his estate more money. It is interesting how few contrary opinions to Kerouac's reputation find as a wide an audience as those of his fan clubs. We have, in many ways, a mechanism that is manufacturing consensus on the man's life and work, and those opposing the view constantly being shamed into submission. No more. Kerouac is gummy stream of curdled offal.

Hopefully you didn't beat her up too badly (you said the argument was "bloody," so I assume you came to blows).

Another cheap shot, friend, and I'm not surprised you resort to the extraordinarily bone headed "assumption" that I assaulted this person on the basis of the use of word "bloody". Two things are possible;

A.You are a literal minded unfornuate who hasn't the wit to recognize an everyday figure of speech, or
B. You're trying to crack wise at my expense, revealing the crucial absence of same said wit and furthering ignoring you self-assigned task of defending your hero's good name.

I can see how someone who writes about "blackened skies" and steakless sizzle is threatened by Kerouac . . . every page of "On the Road" contains brilliant, original images that destroy the types of stereotypes and clichés that characterize your own writing.

This is hardly my best post to appear in The Fray, but the paragraph you cull the "blackened skies" and "steakless sizzle" items from was just fine as it was. Of themselves the terms are hackneyed , but in the frame work of the paragraph, the final graph of the top post, they are effective elements in driving home the substance of my disgust with the worship of Kerouac. It's unseemly for me to characterize my own writing--virtually anyone who's read me for awhile here will attest that I do not use my own writing as an example another writer might follow, and I do not make claims about my writing's qualities-- I will assert that the graph that offends you is tightly written, it swings, it swerves, it makes it's points, and it has a style , a voice, a cadence that is recognizably mine.

Just out of curiosity, who do you, as the proud holder of a lit degree, consider to be a better writer than Kerouac? Who can match him for imagery and voice? Or better yet, maybe you can post some of your own literary writing . . . and then we can do a head to head comparison, you versus Jack.

More ad homonym nonsense.If you want to read my writing and make a critical contrast between my offerings and Kerouac, have had it.Just click on on my name and read away at what I've posted since the New Fray opened up for business. Or you can go to my blog , Ted Burke, like it or not to read more of my opinions on writerly things, and perhaps even make a comment if you're so moved. Also, check out a page of my poems at Poems/Ted Burke. Compare , contrast, critique, and then come back and make a full report as to how Kerouac's writing trumps mine. Have fun with your little project.

Who writes better than Kerouac? Norman Mailer, William S.Burroughs, William Gaddis, John Cheever, Adrian Rich,John Updike, LeRoi Jones,Dawn Powell, Gary Snyder,Thomas Pynchon, Langston Hughes,Joyce Carole Oates,William Styron,James Baldwin, Thomas Wolf, Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, Richard Brautigan, John Clellon Holmes, Thomas McGrath, and so on.

where Allen Ginsberg's Howl didn't work on me as a pick-up line, Kerouac's 'On the Road" sure as hell did.

fellows who presented themselves as the useless, unreliable beat boet types were attractive to me. what did i know? i was useless and unreliable too.

i think, Ted, you'd have liked OtR better had you put it to better employment.

waltz

hope you're well.

who do you, as the proud holder of a lit degree, consider to be a better writer than Kerouac? Who can match him for imagery and voice? Or better yet, maybe you can post some of your own literary writing . . . and then we can do a head to head comparison, you versus Jack.

as the cowboys say, "yer shittin' me, right?"

(Ted, cover your eyes to the following.)

In the scant year i've been reading poems fray, i've read more and better-- much better, cleaner, smarter, sharper, fluid work-- and consistent. did i say consistent? consistent work from the keyboard of Ted Burk than i've read from a lifetime of regurgitating (cud comes to mind) JK's OtR.

image and voice? again, i say, shit.

waltz

i think, Ted, you'd have liked OtR better had you put it to better employment.

ooops.

my re-read reveals you did put OtR to better employment. so, see? while not worth much a literature, it was worth something.

w n c