Author: Jack Kerouac
Format: AudioBook
Reader: Will Patton
5 of 5 stars
One of the contexts of a story that should not be ignored, regardless of genre, is the time in which it was originally written. On The Road makes it impossible to ignore, as it takes the reader back in time to the American 1950s in the same fashion as if the reader was taking up residence inside the head of the main character, ala Being John Malkovich. Even if one is not especially interested in that period of time, the book is a compelling coming of age tale. When attempting to explain regionalism or local color, this story is the epitome.
For me, this story highlighted the idealism and carefree attitudes of secular humanism that were later co-opted by the baby boomer generation. Much like the retelling of a story, such idealism seems to suffer from an interesting form of decay. At the origin is the pure intent, containing elements of good, bad and everything in between, all being acceptable. The next generation of heralds focus on the good elements, ignoring or marginalizing the bad or less savory elements. There seems to be a belief that you can only increase the number of your flock if you proselytize only the benefits of your position. I think the mindset that others need to be converted to the cause creeps in at this point. After successive iterations, the original intent of the ideal becomes completely subjugated to the desire for propagation, strangled from overgrowth of the very thicket that it spawned. At this time, there can be a rebirth of the ideal, but unlike the phoenix, which always arrises from the ashes unchanged, reset to zero, the new ideal is a true child of the parent. Similarities are evident, but the new form is unique and free to act in any way complementary or contradictorily to its origin. This is the mechanism from which phrases such as "history always repeats itself" inevitably arrise. I think On The Road is one of those unique works that carries inside it a spark that might easily help ignite the funeral pyre of its own phoenix.
With respect to the AudioBook, Will Patton does a superb job. The voice characterizations are so well matched with their characters that it becomes hard to think of them sounding any other way. Dean Moriarty absolutely spoke with that raspy intensity; Sal with that naive calmness of tone that is so often associated with the young and inexperienced. While some of the descriptions of wild times seem exceedingly tame by today's standards, the reading does such a good job at keeping the reader well confined within the head of "John Malkovich" that they are well insulated from the buffets of unintentional anachronisms. I hope to revisit the travels of Sal and Dean, confident that there is more to glean from their adventures.
