Lj Book Bingo Reading Game - O is for On the Road by Jack Kerouac

[byslantedlight]

On the Road by Jack Kerouac was our village bookclub book this month (well, one of the village bookclubs - there's at least four...), and my second-last choice as person-in-charge-of-the-books, which I gave up being this month, for various reasons. Someone had asked for a travel book for the next one, and everyone else wrinkled their noses at the idea, so I thought something like this might be a good compromise - and this was one of the few that had enough copies in the library. It was described at bookclub last night by someone as a "bold choice", and what that meant was that only a couple of us actually bothered reading more than the first chapter or so. *headdesk* Which is one reason I've decided to quit the group - not only are they more interested in the pub dinner and talking about the village/family/dogs than talking about books, but they're not really interested in venturing out of their comfort zones in reading either, which is surely one of the points of a book club...

Anyway - to be fair Kerouac is of course not a particularly easy read, all stream of consciousness and very much of his time and place. Most of the bookclub complained that it was just about them going places and having sex and getting drunk, which is kind of missing the point a bit - and missing the point presumably explains why they stopped reading. It does seem a bit repetitive at times, but then it'll say something that makes you blink, or just breathe with the beauty of an image, and that kept me going until I finished it this morning. It's not a comfortable read, because there's lots of truths about the way people behave in there, and I don't think I'd get on well with any of the "characters" (who were all real people in fact), but it has an exuberance to it too, and that's worth thinking about as well... Basically, I'm glad I read it (or re-read it - I thought I already had, but didn't remember it at all!) and I think the people who turned their noses up at the surface of it were missing out!