On the road all over again
Posted Monday, September 03, 2007, 7:33 PM by Lonely Planet
It is a sacred text to some, an old scroll that was made into a book that today is read all over the globe, the inspiration for countless pilgrimages, for quests for meaning, a way of life.
Fifty years ago, on 5 September 1957, On The Road was published, the book that mapped Jack Kerouac's journey down a stream of consciousness and through the US of the 1950s. A book fathered by Dada and the surrealists that became one of the midwives to the counter-culture children of the following decades. An anniversary edition of the book is being published and the original 120-foot typewriter roll - according to legend belted out in one long coffee-and-Benzedrine fuelled burst of hypergraphia - has itself gone on the road visiting libraries and museums across the states.
But does the Kerouacian desire to 'burn, burn, burn' still resonate today or is its message of rebellion against stifling conformity a relic of a time when people paid a higher price for kicking against the pricks of suburban rectitude?
Does On The Road's celebration of the spontaneous and the improvised get lost in the advertiser's command to 'just do it'?
As travellers what do you think?
- Dan Caleo
Labels: The Americas
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3 Comments:
Disclaimer first: I've never read 'On the Road', so feel free to ignore this. I'd say it's pretty hard these days to come up with a rebellion that doesn't get mainstreamed and commodified before you can blink. I'd also say that travel as a form of rebellion is pretty much dead - companies like Lonely Planet love to market travel as a way of proving your independence and otherness from the mainstream, but travel has really become just another status symbol, something you can purchase to give you more cred. Buy a big screen TV, buy a trip to Kazakhstan; they're both just ways of improving your standing with whatever niche you consider yourself part of (and proving it by showing you reject the trappings of whatever niches you don't consider yourself part of).
I believe the message of ‘On the Road’ of living life in the moment and to its fullest will always remain valid.
With the onslaught of too many modern day ‘pleasures’ like television reality dramas and electronic games, it makes greater sense to rebel against mediocrity and experience the world as it exists. While the travel industry might be booming due to promises of instant gratification with a dose of reality, many are coming to the ‘now or never’ conclusion, the philosophy this book is based on.
Mala Mukunda
Live The Dream…Tell The Tale
http://www.traveling-stories-magazine.com/
On The Road is still the best book around for getting young people on their feet and out there, but it does read like something from a different time. It is notable for not being a travel book, more about one man's experiences. That said, if you set out to travel like Sal does: hitching, taking buses, bumming round cities seeing live music and hanging out with friends you'd have a pretty great time. Just don't expect it to be like the 1950s.
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