Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think) - Hardcover

Leland, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670063258 ISBN 13: 9780670063253

Publisher: Viking, 2007

Synopsis

Legions of youthful Americans have taken On the Road as a manifesto for rebellion and an inspiration to hit the road. But there is much more to the book than that. In Why Kerouac Matters, John Leland embarks on a wry, insightful, and playful discussion of the novel, arguing that it still matters because it lays out an alternative road map to growing up. Along the way, Leland overturns many misconceptions about On the Road as he examines the lessons that Kerouac?s alter ego, Sal Paradise, absorbs and dispenses on his novelistic journey to manhood, and how those lessons?about work and money, love and sex, art and holiness? still reverberate today.

About this title

About the Author

John Leland is a reporter for The New York Times and former editor in chief of Details magazine. He is the author of Hip: The History.

Reviews

Having immersed himself in Beat culture while writing Hip: A History, Leland, a New York Times reporter and former editor-in-chief of Details, makes a convincing case that Jack Kerouac's most famous novel has endured for half a century because it's a book about how to live your life. The lesson isn't about impulsive self-gratification, as many readers believe, aided by Kerouac's tendency to go vague in his most emotionally critical passages. Leland reminds us that narrator Sal Paradise was always looking to settle down into a conventional life, and Kerouac, Leland says, was generally of a conservative mindset. Framing On the Road as a spiritual quest, Leland deftly combines the biographical facts of Kerouac's life with discussions of his literary antecedents in Melville and Goethe, as well as the inspiration he took from contemporary jazz, finding in bebop's rhythms a new way to circle around a story's themes. Section headings like The 7 Habits of Highly Beat People get a little silly, but Leland's insights provide new layers of significance even for those familiar with the novel. (Aug. 20)
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*Starred Review* "On the Road is a book about how to live your life," writes Leland, the author of Hip (2004), in this sometimes arch, always discerning, and occasionally full-out brilliant reconsideration of a novel loved and maligned for all the wrong reasons. Leland carefully parses the inspiration Kerouac drew from Goethe, Melville, Twain, and Proust; charts the novel's jazz-based circular structure; and perceptively analyzes Kerouac's mystical Catholicism and exalted artistic mission. But most importantly, Leland interprets On the Road as a set of parables in which Sal Paradise (based on Kerouac himself) and Dean Moriarty (an improvisation on Neal Cassady, Kerouac's main muse and the devil incarnate) embody opposite approaches to existence. For these two seekers, one in search of God, the other on the prowl for sex, "the road is a penance, not an adventure." As Leland shrewdly explicates the novel's spiritual teachings within dynamic social commentary, he links Kerouac to such antithetical realms as the Christian Right and hip-hop, boldly recalibrating our understanding of an artist as immensely conflicted as he was gifted. Seaman, Donna

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670063258
• ISBN 13: 9780670063253
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 205