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So, again, how this book made three lists of modern "greats" escapes me.

The visuals are terrific, but a book full of this makes for dull reading.

It was called "Denver Doldrums." Carlo woke up in the moring and heard the "vulgar pigeons" yakking in the street outside his cell he saw the sad nightingales" nodding on the branches and they reminded him of his mother."Īnd that paragraph continues on for another twenty sentences. It was like the room of a Russian saint: one bed, a candle burning, stone walls that oozed moisture, and a crazy makeshift ikon of some kind that he had made. You went down an alley, down some stone steps, opened an old raw door, and went through a kind of cellar till you came to his board door. Here's a very typical sample: Carlo's basement apartment was on Grant Street in an old red brick rooming house near a church. In other words, he's a pretty boring writer. Kerouac paints great visuals, but he sucks at suspense and is only a hair better at character development. The style is a first person narrative filled with run on sentences. Yeah, Dean gets married several times in there and a few other thinly drawn characters emerge, but I believe I've captured the essence of the plotline. Sal and Dean hitchhike and/or drive around.

Dean creates excitement because he is crazy. But the whole story basically repeats one theme four or five times: Sal is bored. The book does a reasonable job as presenting the characters as bored with their lives. It is known as THE work focused on the Beat Generation, the demographic that was disenchanted with life right after World War II. On the Road is the story of two men, Sal and Dean, who travel across the country, multiple times I might add. Sadly, I think I enjoyed A Passage to India more, and if you read my review of that book you know that isn't saying much. I've completed my second attempt at reading one of the great books of the 20th century, On the Road by Jack Kerouac.