For those of us going along in a muddle, unable to get outside of our self-imposed cages that thwart our ability to be creative, wanting to get back to a time when life was simpler and ideas didn’t take so long to think through this is the perfect piece of escapism.  It’s not a lure to travel, it’s more than that, it’s a lure towards madness, spontaneity and life that is sitting waiting outside our door without us even realising it.  It makes us wonder why – with life so short – do we have to wait for things.  There is an element of nostalgia; the post war American start of jazz, without all of the destractions that life as we know it offers, when getting in a car and driving across the land was just about the most funk you could get.  But what’s important is not the experience but more the ability to be free; free from worry, free from sleep, free from anything that drags.  It’s very mania comes from the fact that Kerouac (the author) wrote this in three weeks, typed it out on one large scroll of paper with a typewriter, with no paragraphs.  It’s become legendary in some circles – these are not my circles – and this is no place to situate or comment on masterpieces and is beside the point.  It may be that everyone knows of this book; but a friend of mine mentioned it to me; and a week latter it fatefully stared at me half price in the Tenanment Musuem of the lower west side in New York, and the rest is history.  This is altering; this is frantic; this is the answer to many things that confront us and is a call to action – to speak to strangers you don’t know because they wow you, to search for “it”, to stop being bashful, to not pretend to be anything but human and alive, because life is short and if something doesn’t make you realize that, you might wake tomorrow and it may have passed you by. 

Only sadness confronts you if you try to read anything more about this book, so I don’t want to go on.  The very copy I bought had 100 pages of 4 articles dedicated to American Literary Critque or some such triviality before the story as if they were more important.  If you go to Wikipedia you’ll find the scroll it was typed on was bought for $2.4m.  That we look back with such awe at this book only distracts from it’s rawness.  I urge you not to get caught up in this nonsense, for it will only try to cleverly distract you into the meaning of life; as i’m trying to do here.  Just read it.  Please.