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On the Road

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| Paperback | 9789994958320

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Book Description

MAXnotes offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature, presented in a lively and interesting fashion. Written by literary experts who currently teach the subject, MAXnotes will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the work. MAXnotes are designed to stimulate independ ent thought about tContinue

Critics

'Tao of Travel': The Importance of Elsewhere

Before too much of the 19th century had exhausted itself in revolution and bloody war, travel, which had once been the province of solitary wayfarers, was being transformed into an industry, thanks largely to the efforts of Cooks in London. Travel, f ... (read full critics)

popmatters published on Thu, 4 Aug 2011

On the Road to Babadag: Travels in the Other Europe, By Andrzej Stasiuk, trans. Michael Kandel

There isn't quite a name for the region that holds the Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk in thrall. The general drift is from "the land of King Ubu to the land of Count Dracula", Poland to Romania; the reach extends to Albania in the south and Transnistr ... (read full critics)

independent published on Fri, 29 Jul 2011

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17 Reviews

8 people find this helpful

Kerouac is a spiritual guide for everyone who's free.

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Izabella Stardust said on Jun 8, 2007 | Add your feedback

6 people find this helpful

Unbeliavably boring. It is for me totally unfathomable why such collection of idle mental and geographical wanderings could became a cult for an entire generation.

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zontar said on Nov 13, 2007 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Boring

This book is very famous, but at the same time I found it boooring. It is diveded in four different parts, but there are no differences from one to another: the first opne could be interesting but the others are repetitive.

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feder84 said on Jul 26, 2010 | Add your feedback

On the road to... nowhere in particular

I realise that this book is not really about the unfolding of a journey from A to B (or more accurately a number of journeys), where the story is defined by start and end points and events in between, and the ultimate achievement of a goal - instead it is a story about characters, people and more br ... (continue)

I realise that this book is not really about the unfolding of a journey from A to B (or more accurately a number of journeys), where the story is defined by start and end points and events in between, and the ultimate achievement of a goal - instead it is a story about characters, people and more broadly a generation (the so-called 'beat' generation) who are the non-participants in the American Dream, the under-class, the 'have-nots'. The lives of the main protagonists, Sal Paradise (our narrator, Jack Karouac's alter ego) and Dean Moriarty, are defined by their itinerant, non-conformist, high speed-, alcohol- and drug- fuelled experiences between New York, Denver, San Francisco and finally Mexico City, as they search for some secret to life and happiness that is ultimately unattainable.
The style of writing is unique, energetic and rolling (like the road), but after a while I found it, like the scenery and the characters, repetitive. By the end I had run out of gas.

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Matthew Hardcastle said on Feb 28, 2012 about the eBook edition | Add your feedback

" so in America when the sun goes down and i sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over new jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the west coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, ... (continue)

" so in America when the sun goes down and i sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over new jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the west coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in iowa i know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that god is pooh bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of dean moriarty, i even think of old dean moriarty the father we never found, i think of dean moriarty "

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kovalski said on Dec 30, 2011 | Add your feedback