Posted by Steven
on 27/4/2009, 8:22:05, in reply to "On the Road"
76.187.98.74
My thoughts and experience with On the Road are quite similar. I read it in 2002 and had a hard time looking past all the theft. I didn't care enough about it to re-read it for the Yale course, though I probably should at some point.
Hungerford's description of the nuanced language made the novel sound highly crafted, not the work of three weeks of frenzied typing. Did Kerouac produce all the allusions she mentions spontaneously and subconsciously, or did he work them in later during the years between composition and publication? If she addressed this question I didn't catch it.
Maybe Lale is out Kerouacing.
--Previous Message--
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: I watched the lectures for On the Road . The part
: about Kerouac's aesthetic endeavor interested me. What
: did she call it? His search for a language of
: experience or something. I was also somewhat
: interested in the idea of the book as a love story. I
: don't really remember how much notice I took of Sal's
: unrequited feelings, whether of friendship or
: something else, for Dean. I've read the book a couple
: times, but the last time must have been around 2000. I
: really disliked it the first time I read it which must
: have been around 95. I just really disliked all the
: characters. I disliked the lifestyle. I guess I was
: kind of bourgeois or something. I liked it better when
: I reread it. I could be interested in the characters
: then. I still don't want to hang out with them. I do
: like using the name Kerouac as a verb. One of you guys
: should buy a Winnebego, so Readlit can go kerouacing
: around the three countries. That makes it sound like I
: do like the lifestyle. I'd be interested in driving
: around looking at stuff, sitting around drinking a bit
: and talking about literature, but not the other.
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