A question I have about this — 5 years ago
I finished the audio book to On the Road. There is little description or characterization. We never really get to know the characters and cannot sympathize with them. The author is all telling and no showing. The book is full of characters; they come at you left and right, but they have no substance.
I guess I was born at the wrong time. There are people out there who think this is one of the greatest things ever written. It is a book about nonconformists in a time when everyone was conforming. The book was almost a battle cry for what was to come in the next generation. I respect what the book meant to people at that time.
It is also interesting to see how powerfully some people can be affected by a single person. But that aside, what does this book offer? Does it still have a place as literature? It felt to me like anyone could have written this sort of log.
And to those who say this book makes you want to travel, why would it? The protagonist is an awful man. The author romanticizes his cruelty, insanity, debauchery, and sexism. The objectified way women were treated was difficult to take.
