Rating: 7/10
Written by: Jack Kerouac
Review: Recently I’ve been reading books I’ve always meant to read and not got around to for one reason or another. This was one of the first books I thought of in this category. When I was younger I almost read it several times but it just didn’t happen.
I have to confess I was a little disappointed, I don’t think the years since it was written have served it well. It now sounds dated and rooted in its time. At the time of course it was significant and thats why we read it today but I can’t help thinking I should have read it 25 years ago when time wouldn’t have been quite so cruel to it. Its a struggle not to laugh at some of the hip language and Kerouac’s writing style also gets in the way a little, it sometimes feels as though he wrote it in French and then translated it into English (Aha, I note on Wikipedia that he may indeed have done this to some extent). The book isn’t served by the process. I also felt an editor might have been a good thing, its a bit of a stream of consciousness.
On the positive side its does evoke the era and leaves you wondering what it would have been like to jump that freight train across country.
All that said it still rates 7/10 which says I liked it. I had just expected it to be 10/10.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_road
Amazon: Buy it
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