I must say flipping through the first few pages of this very Beat book beat me up so much. It reminds me of my struggle through The Catcher of The Rye, except in that book the struggle lasted till the very last page. However, once I got used to the beat style of narrative and lifestyle the author was trying to convey, the vibe started to feel natural and almost inviting.

The story, as the title suggests, is about travelling across the US on the road in late 1940s. The protagonist crossed the American east-west continent 4 times, spanning a wide range of cities and towns, such as NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, and even Mexico City. This siteprovides 4 interactive maps that recorded the full routes and stops of the continental journeys. Bearing a strong fondness of travelling myself, the exhilaration of road life seeped into me while I was reading, and it even pushed me to embark on my first one-day bike trip.

But the book is so much more than road trips. Sal and Dean, the two main characters, encapsulated the spirit of American beat generation. They have no destinations whatsoever with their life, but they love to - or rather, they must be on the road at all times. It’s almost coded in their genes. Every attempt at settling down only ends up with more messes and troubles, which eventually drove them onto the road again, their eternal escape from the worldly matters and responsibilities. They sought after “kicks” everywhere they go at all cost, be it parties, bops, weed, girls - especially girls.

And here comes the controversies roused by the theme of the book: derogatory sexism, racism, and pretentious self-enlightenment on life, among many other things. Although I hold diametrically different views from those expressed in the book, I was not in the least sense bothered by them. First of all, I was fully aware that the book was completed in 1950s, during which the contemporary mainstream values carry very little resemblance to those nowadays, so the author’s attitude towards minorities and women was merely a projection of the era. And this brings out my second reason: only through this projection could I peak at the authentic side of the beat generation most directly without another layer of intermediation fabricated by the author. As for the criticisms on Kerouac’s straightforward literary style, I find it slightly perplexing - since we are reading about the beat generation, wouldn’t it be more out of place if a very refined and formal tone is assumed for the storytelling? This stream of linear and short sentences wonderfully fits in the setting of the book to me, in fact.

It is a strange book for me after all in the sense that it resonated with me in spite of the little similarity between the characters and myself. For one, the story felt so vivid to me that I once thought this must’ve been taken straight away from a real-life road trip journal. Indeed, Kerouac traversed America a few times for the book, during which he amassed innumerous materials and ideas. But it was the theme that stirred me the most throughout my read. According to Kerouac himself, the book was intended to recount the story of “two guys hitchhiking to California in search of something they don’t really find, and losing themselves on the road, coming all the way back hopeful of something else” (see this post). The story was not the classic lost-and-found type at all; rather, the lost were simply lost, and they stayed that way till the end. They seemed to be recovering something with the road, but they didn’t know how, nor cared much about it. This mentality was almost exactly what I would share occasionally, sometimes for merely a few hours yet sometimes for months. I’ve always been on the road for something, something that I’m adamant about or something I don’t even know what it is, and I didn’t even care to know.

Finally, the book certainly had its own shortcomings: just like the characters, my excitement and “upbeatness” also wore out gradually towards the end of the book. It certainly was inspiring along the lines of one exhilarating journey after another, but the repetition did not add much to the feeling. Instead, once I got used to the madness and frenzy in the book, the lack of variations in some later parts of the book couldn’t rouse me up anymore. I suppose Sal and Dean might feel something similar deep down.

In the last part of the story, the two young men parted ways, but the ending was very ambiguous about their states of mind at that juncture. Sal decided to settle down once and for all from the road, while Dean carries on and on. One may say Sal has finally found himself while Dean perpetually lost. But what has Sal found exactly, and how can we judge that Dean is lost? Maybe, in a sense, it is Dean who has never lost himself while Sal did eventually. Or maybe they both found themselves after all. I’m afraid it is only for them to tell.