On the Road - Jack Kerouac

"Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother
and the tears she cried, they were cried for none other
than her little boy lost in our little world that hated
and that dared to drag him down, her little boy courageous.
who chose his words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
Hip flask slinging madman, steaming cafe flirts.
they all spoke through you"
                     ( Hey Jack Kerouac - 10,000 Maniacs )

I read On the Road, stretched across 2024, like I was driving at a slow pace on the road for days - if not weeks ( but the reading dragged on for months). This was okay, for the book was to be savoured through where Sal (read as Jack), and Dean, was at the moment, or how they were travelling. There were characters that I wanted to keep track of and even kept a piece of paper with the characters scribbled from spark notes ( to avoid my picking up the phone to check on these characters - we all know where that leads to ). It is a book through which one attempts to grapple with the unrest of the main characters, their search for freedom, the risks they take to live their lives as they feel they ought to.

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'”

There were certain parts which capture incidents with historical value, like how they live through the explosion of Jazz - between times of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis - and captures live performances of George Shearing. I found the description of their trip to Mexico city, and the journey across Mexico to reach there engrossing too.

I read two books with cultural value in important phases in recent history in 2024 - 1970s in London and its suburbs ( Buddha of Suburbia), and On the Road. These type of books have to enjoyed for the nuances they contain as documents of cultural history, and in that respect I am glad to say I enjoyed them both.

Rating: ****