End of the Road

I finished reading On the Road the other day. I had put the book off for many years because I thought it would be a difficult read, and an outdated one as well. I was expecting a rambling stream-of-consciousness narrative, eccentric and dense. (After all, Kerouac did put his manuscript on a 120-foot-long scroll.) I guess "rambling" does apply—it's a story about rambling, after all—but otherwise I found it very readable. In fact, I ended up loving the book and would rank it as one of the great American novels, along with The Scarlet Letter, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Adventures of Augie March. Here's a passage that gives the flavor of Kerouac's writing:

Meanwhile Dean and I went out to dig the streets of Mexican San Antonio. It was fragrant and soft—the softest air I'd ever known—and dark, and mysterious, and buzzing. Sudden dark. Dean crept along and said not a word. "Oh, this is too wonderful to do anything!" he whispered. "Let's just creep along and see everything. Look! Look! A crazy San Antonio pool shack." We went in. A dozen boys were shooting pool at three tables, all Mexicans. Dean and I bought Cokes and shoved nickels in the jukebox and played Wynonie Blues Harris and Lionel Hampton and Lucky Millinder and jumped. Meanwhile Dean warned me to watch.

"Dig, now, out of the corner of your eye and as we listen to Wynonie blow about his baby's pudding and as we also smell the soft air as you say—dig the kid, the crippled kid shooting pool at table one, the butt of the joint's jokes, y'see, he's been the butt all his life. The other fellows are merciless but they love him."

The crippled kid was some kind of malformed midget with a great big beautiful face, much too large, in which enormous brown eyes moistly gleamed. "Don't you see, Sal, a San Antonio Mex Tom Snark, the same story the world over. See, they hit him on the ass with a cue? Ha-ha-ha! hear them laugh. You see, he wants to win the game, he's bet four bits. Watch! Watch!" We watched as the angelic young midget aimed for a bank shot. He missed. The other fellows roared. "Ah, man," said Dean, "and now watch." They had the little boy by the scruff of the neck and were mauling him around, playful. He squealed. He stalked out in the night but not without a backward bashful, sweet glance. "Ah, man, I'd love to know that gone little cat and what he thinks and what kind of girls he has—oh, man, I'm high on this air!" ...

I suspect "dig" will be part of my everyday vocabulary for a while.

I kept picturing Nick Nolte as Dean Moriarty, apparently because I saw him play Neal Cassady in the 1980 film Heart Beat. By the way, a film version of On the Road is in pre-production; it's to be made by the director of The Motorcycle Diaries. I'm not familiar with the male leads, but the female leads are set to be Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst.


Next up: Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis. This is not going to be a masterpiece but I'm hoping for a good read at least. I dig the first sentence:

Elmer Gantry was drunk.