I'm actually hesitant to even write about Jack Kerouac, let alone write out his name. I feel as though words in any relation to his own simply won't measure up to the genius of his voice. Unfortunately, or fortuantely, I've been "lost" in his rhythmic lines of winding prose, so I can't help but provide my two cents on the light-headed rush I feel when I can finally peel my eyes away from these pages.
In "Retracing Kerouac's Rocky Road", Lynell George describes why people, like me, enjoyo getting lost in Kerouac. "There are those who return to Jack Kerouac just to get lost in the ride. Not across lonesome America but in the serpentine locomotion of his prose." On the Road is eccentric with obvious attempts of experimentation to devise an unconventional tone in writing. The characters are not unlike people most of us know on a daily basis (especially those of us living in Los Angeles). Characters are pathologically given to aimless travel, women, car stealing, reefers, bop jazz, liquor and pseudo-intellectual talk, as though life were just one long joy-ride that can't be stopped, and probably shouldn't be. Although Sal Paradise knows to perceive that kind of life as stark-crazy mad, he for a while submisses to it and later becomes quite sympathetic toward those to frenetic to realize it's stark-crazy mad.
If you can't afford to get "on the road" in pursuit of kicks, purchase this Kerouac device and join the ride.
