Rating: 
Summary: Too much meandering
Review: I read this book because a friend said it was her favorite book. About a hundred pages in I was completely bored, and I was only able to finish it through sheer will power. Only a few gems of insight into the human character are scattered throughout an endless stream of "and then, and then, and then" escapades. I did not relate to anyone in the book; characters are restless, aimless, without direction, eager to go somewhere just for the sake of going, unable to commit to anything or anyone, including each other, always sure that the best thing is just around the bend. They're like kids in an amusement park who want to ride everything, but shortly after they get in line for one ride, they decide to get in line for another ride, and they repeat this until the park is closed. So I felt little sympathy for them when they would inevitably find themselves down and out somewhere, wondering why they hadn't arrived at the mirage, and wondering which mirage to chase next.
My personality is just not at all suited to this kind of aimless wandering.
Rating: 
Summary: Friggin Great book
Review: I'm only a freshmen in high school, but this is my favorite book. I liked it so much that I got through the 300+ page book in 3 days. I would read it during classes under my desk, during my study halls, and the first thing I did when i got home was read it. It Kerouac made me feel compasion for the characters criss-crossing endlessly across the country. Sure, at times the plot may have gotten a little of track and aimless, but not enough to make me stop reading.
Rating:
Summary: Pshhh
Review: If you don't understand it, don't write a review. Those of you who says the plot wanders, I'm not sure the book was meant to have your traditional plot. It did not meander due to lack of writing ability, but due to Kerouac's conscious effort.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic -- through and through!
Review: In "On The Road", Sal Paradise(Kerouac), a young writer from New York City, ventures to cities around the country, staying with old friends, making new friends, and doing everything he can to stay alive and move on. His mentor and friend, Dean Moriarty(Neil Cassidy), often travels with Sal, always talking, laughing, and being his insane self. Now let's stop and take a brief look at the fascinating life of Dean Moriarty: Throughout the story, Dean plays several different women, has 3 wives and 4 children, half of whom he can't account for ever meeting. He was born in Salt Lake City, and grew up going to reform schools and jail. Dean was an infamous hustler in Texas and Denver who was always stealing cars and money, but never for more then $10 or just when he needed a quick ride. He was insane, always laughing and having a great time, and always getting the most he could out of life. Sal and Dean experienced some great high's and low's of travelling together, seeing such cities as Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and Mexico City. Throughout the book you get to know the fascinating personalities of Sal, Dean, and several other characters. This novel is a classic, any way you slice it. A very worthy reading experience -- and I do mean "experience." Other recent novels I recommend are Survivor by Palahniuk, The Losers Club by Richard Perez
Rating:
Summary: A Classic -- through and through!
Review: In "On The Road", Sal Paradise(Kerouac), a young writer from New York City, ventures to cities around the country, staying with old friends, making new friends, and doing everything he can to stay alive and move on. His mentor and friend, Dean Moriarty(Neil Cassidy), often travels with Sal, always talking, laughing, and being his insane self. Now let's stop and take a brief look at the fascinating life of Dean Moriarty: Throughout the story, Dean plays several different women, has 3 wives and 4 children, half of whom he can't account for ever meeting. He was born in Salt Lake City, and grew up going to reform schools and jail. Dean was an infamous hustler in Texas and Denver who was always stealing cars and money, but never for more then $10 or just when he needed a quick ride. He was insane, always laughing and having a great time, and always getting the most he could out of life. Sal and Dean experienced some great high's and low's of travelling together, seeing such cities as Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and Mexico City. Throughout the book you get to know the fascinating personalities of Sal, Dean, and several other characters. This novel is a classic, any way you slice it. A very worthy reading experience -- and I do mean "experience." Other recent novels I recommend are Survivor by Palahniuk, The Losers Club by Richard Perez
Rating:
Summary: We're just two lost souls......
Review: Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" certainly paints a very different picture of the so-called "American Myth" than one would normally imagine. Instead of the freedom of the open road, we get lost souls without purpose or direction. Instead of the vast expanse of the West, we get vastly empty realities, and characters that can barely be said to exist. Rather than the allure of the big city, Kerouac gives us the dreary, crime-ridden concrete jungles of Los Angeles and Manhattan, where only the strong and ruthless survive. It's not the romantic world that we remember as children, nor the storybook fantasies that fill our youthful dreams. There is a great couple of lines as Sal attempts to hitch his way back East: "Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life." This is of course a gloomy prospect, but one that became a sad and frighteningly accurate reality during and after the horrors of WWII. There is great sadness in these characters, mainly Sal, that is due not to one particular event. Instead, I sense the sadness is a disillusioned one; a disappointment about the world, and about searching for something that may have never existed.
Rating: 
Summary: Second-tier classic - timepiece maybe?
Review: On the Road excited me at first. Even for those who barely know of Jack Kerouac, his name is always attached with a type of dusky mystique. After I heard that Kerouac was one of Hunter S. Thompson's influences, I decided to read On the Road, his most well known work.
Frankly, I was really disappointed. I saw what Kerouac was trying to do in On the Road - break up the suffocating routine of the 1950s and also infuse everyday life with a type of mystical quality - but I just didn't care. I wanted to, but I couldn't. The experiment failed for me. These characters struck me as the creation of a two-week, drug-fueled writing binge. Vapid and sloppy, in other words. The plot meanders, though that in itself isn't so uncommon in 2004. What makes it worse is Kerouac's obvious talent. It's frustrating really. The parts of a masterpiece are all there, but they just don't come together for me.
Reading Kerouac is like watching the 1990s Atlanta Braves - forever stuck on the edge of greatness. I think that if Kerouac had taken a step away from the drugs and put a little more craftsmanship into his novel, it would have really refined the message. That isn't selling out. Despite my own opinion on this book, I do recommend you read it. On the Road is a stopover for any culturally literate person, and it will at least broaden your viewpoint. I just wish it had been more interesting. These three stars are more for what this book represents then the actual text itself.
Rating:
Summary: Bygone era
Review: The escapades of Kerouac's semi-autobiographical twosome, narrator Sal Paradise with Dean Moriarty as they crisscross the entire USA, inspired a generation. Set in 1948, the book epitomises post-war America, but it echoed down into the 60s. Elements of quest and picaresque abound in this search for dream-fulfilment and self-realisation, almost Quixotic in its delusional frenzy. Place-names are intoned hypnotically for the necessarily strong topographical slant: "...we rolled across the hoodwink night of the Louisiana plains - Lawtell, Eunice, Kinder, and De Quincy, western rickety towns becoming more bayou-like as we reached the Sabine. In Old Opelousas I went into a grocery store to buy bread and cheese while Dean saw to gas and oil." The imagery is strong on colour, especially red of all kinds: for night, for heat, for desert, etc. There are also photographic snapshots, people glimpsed once and never again: " - a little girl in the back seat, crying to her mother, "Mama when do we get home to Truckee?'" Included in the vast cast of supporting characters are Dean's wife and one true love Marylou, his lovers Camille and later, Inez, plus legendary, larger-than-life folk like Old Bull Lee, Carlo Marx (ha, ha) and Remi Boncoeur. Kerouac exhibits knowledge of humankind at work and at play - including some marvellous sections on club life and jazz (George Shearing being compared to God). I found the last hundred pages hard going. Dean's inevitable downward trajectory is tragic, though. Essential reading for the background to James Dean, to "Easy Rider", "Midnight Cowboy" and other "buddyship" classics. Not to mention the intellectual underpinning of post-world War II, and the precursors of rock'n'roll.
Rating: 
Summary: Thrills and kicks - in America
Review: The escapades of Kerouac's semi-autobiographical twosome, narrator Sal Paradise with Dean Moriarty as they crisscross the entire USA, inspired a generation. Set in 1948, the book epitomises post-war America, but it echoed down into the 60s. Elements of quest and picaresque abound in this search for dream-fulfilment and self-realisation, almost Quixotic in its delusional frenzy. Place-names are intoned hypnotically for the necessarily strong topographical slant: "...we rolled across the hoodwink night of the Louisiana plains - Lawtell, Eunice, Kinder, and De Quincy, western rickety towns becoming more bayou-like as we reached the Sabine. In Old Opelousas I went into a grocery store to buy bread and cheese while Dean saw to gas and oil." The imagery is strong on colour, especially red of all kinds: for night, for heat, for desert, etc. There are also photographic snapshots, people glimpsed once and never again: " - a little girl in the back seat, crying to her mother, "Mama when do we get home to Truckee?'" Included in the vast cast of supporting characters are Dean's wife and one true love Marylou, his lovers Camille and later, Inez, plus legendary, larger-than-life folk like Old Bull Lee, Carlo Marx (ha, ha) and Remi Boncoeur. Kerouac exhibits knowledge of humankind at work and at play - including some marvellous sections on club life and jazz (George Shearing being compared to God). I found the last hundred pages hard going. Dean's inevitable downward trajectory is tragic, though. Essential reading for the background to James Dean, to "Easy Rider", "Midnight Cowboy" and other "buddyship" classics. Not to mention the intellectual underpinning of post-world War II, and the precursors of rock'n'roll.
Rating:
Summary: Bygone era
Review: This book depicts genuine counter-culture before rebellion was mass marketed and served up as cookie cutter corporate leech fodder.
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