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Comment by huhkerrf | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's because I never had my On the Road phase, but this review on Kerouac I always found really strong:

> On the Road is a terrible book about terrible people. Jack Kerouac and his terrible friends drive across the US about seven zillion times for no particular reason, getting in car accidents and stealing stuff and screwing women whom they promise to marry and then don’t.

> Jack Kerouac’s relationship with Dean can best be described as “enabler”. He rarely commits any great misdeeds himself. He’s just along for the ride [usually literally, generally in flagrant contravention of all applicable traffic laws] with Dean, watching him destroy people’s lives, doing nothing about it, and then going into rhapsodies about how free-spirited and unencumbered and holy and mad and visionary it all is.

https://readscottalexander.com/posts/ssc-book-review-on-the-...

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And in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, they don't even manage to do any motorcycle maintenance!

(I think people have misunderstood the appeal of the book, probably because the psychological conditions of the mid-20th century are unrecognizable. It is significant that the book is from 1957, a whole decade before Easy Rider and the general transition period centered on 1968)

For someone who has read neither, could you expand on this? What makes this book significant from a 1950s-1960s perspective? Is it worth reading today for its own merit outside the historical relevance?

They most certainly do motorcycle maintenance! I remember asking my dad what the hell points used to be on engines. The first few chapters contain a lot of talk about motorcycle maintenance. You’re not going to learn to change out a carb or anything but it’s there.

"Oh yeah. Tappets."

That was the other one. I was very happy with “points” because I finally got the double entendre in Bob Seger’s Night Moves. Until then I only knew the entendre part!

Years don't have psychological conditions, people do.

This is untrue, the book is filled with incidents of motorcycle maintenance. Perhaps you have not read it? The second chapter centers around a complex issue involving a piston seizure:

"“I remove a glove with my teeth, reach down and feel the aluminum side cover of the engine. The temperature is fine. Too warm to leave my hand there, not so hot I get a burn. Nothing wrong there.

On an air-cooled engine like this, extreme overheating can cause a “seizure.” This machine has had one-in fact, three of them. I check it from time to time the same way I would check a patient who has had a heart attack, even though it seems cured.”

This New Yorker piece inspired me to finally pick up On the Road last night. I don think it’s a terrible book, but I would say the jury’s out on the people. I’m eighty or so pages in and waiting for the magic to happen. If it’s more of a tone poem, I’ll wind up tapping out because those books and movies are never my jam.

Could be I just like On the Road: The Musical, book by Craig Finn, music by The Hold Steady.

> generally in flagrant contravention of all applicable traffic laws

Being up front, I cannot stand this author in the first place. The idea there were any applicable traffic laws in the Great Inbetween in 1950s America is stupid.

It must be so exhausting to go through life only enjoying things that match one’s up-to-the-minute current moral views. I guess all biographies of influential people are basically out, as being successful in 1000BC or 1500AD required one to do things considered unethical today.

It feels a bit like religious fundamentalism with a different veneer.

Ok but you do realize that he was alive in the 1900s, not 1000 BC.

The moral views of the average person circa 1930 are very different from one today.

But I read old books for their interesting stories, viewpoints on life, literary quality, etc. – not to tut-tut someone for having different moral views than me, a hundred years later.

So it doesn't bother me. Like I said, I really cannot understand the mindset of someone that reads a book from another era/civilization and focuses on critiquing the author's ethics. Just feels like such a limited way to interact with the world.

Please point to the things being described in that comment and explain what the average person in 1930 would have felt about them.

I don't see it. The 1930s weren't that long ago, there are still people alive who lived through them. If you were talking about ancient Egypt, you might have a point.

The 1930s had radically different opinions on race, gender, religion, and a host of other things as compared to today.

Define "radical"

The world has entirely different values today than circa 1930. This is...obvious? Read a book or Wikipedia page? I don't know what else to tell you.

The world doesn't have values, people do. And many of them are the same.

it's usually inappropriate to feed a troll, but I'll just say "olympic gold champion was congratulated by literally Adolf Hitler, but not his own country the Unite States - because he was black"

You had your fascists and you had your anti-fascists where antifascists were blamed for what fascists did.

As a brown person in the US, I certainly would have felt a difference between then and now…

The United States isn't the entire world.

It is, however, the setting of On the Road.

I recommend you read the book "Pimp" by Iceberg Slim, about a Black America in the early/mid 20th century.

Personally speaking, I found the book very 'awe-inspiring'/it made me go 'wow' a bunch, because I found the author's experience so completely different from my own :)

You're jumping to some wild conclusions there. This isn't about wokism (if you know the author, that would be clear) or political correctness.

It's more: wow these guys are jerks, and they get on my nerves.

A protagonist doesn't need to be perfect. But, ultimately, you should be rooting for him.

I wasn't making it about wokism at all.

And I don't agree that you should be rooting for protagonist. That's an extremely limited way of looking at literature, much less history. I can think of half a dozen books offhand that have unpleasant or anti-hero type protagonists.

Fair enough, I withdraw the "rooting for" comment. More accurate to say that you shouldn't be actively annoyed at the protagonist.

Isn't art supposed to elicit an emotional response in the audience?

> I can think of half a dozen books offhand that have unpleasant or anti-hero type protagonists.

I was not a fan of Thomas Covenant. What a prick.

I just finished American Tabloid and I don’t think there was a single honorable character in the whole novel. Not one, out of dozens.

In A Song of Fire and Ice (the series that spawned Game of Thrones, and has yet to be completed), you get to really hating on a character, then, their story gets told from their side (usually, before they are killed), and you find that maybe you don't hate them so much.

That’s interesting. I was a huge Ellroy fan and I think that’s probably my favorite book. I always got the impression in his books the idea was the protagonists were heroes or, more accurately, could have been if there was any place for them in the Ellroy universe. Instead, they do sordid stuff because there really isn’t another way in the rigged game they live in. To feel like they have agency, they try to find a third way between the options of “good” and “evil” but usually wind up doomed, so who can say if they have agency at all. Except for Dudley, who is definitely not a hero in anyone’s universe. Though even he is a bit of a nod to the trope of heroic Irish cop who gets things done in spite of the system.

I don’t know if it’s him or me, but the last book gave me the feeling Ellroy has fully embraced the man-o-sphere. I can hardly judge him, given the story of his upbringing, but I think I am going to catch the next stop on his bus line.

I haven't read any of his other books, but Tabloid definitely didn't have that feeling you mentioned. It's more of a pervasive matter-of-fact "everyone is corrupt" vibe, even people like JFK, the FBI, cops, etc.

I should revisit it, but we came at it from different places (and good Lord I read it over a quarter century ago). There are some threads from previous Ellroy books (Pete Bondurant himself) and, assuming I recall any of this correctly after all this time, I feel like the Kemper Boyd character is the same basic Guy as Ed Exley from LA Confidential and the protagonist of White Jazz. Or maybe The Black Dahlia. But obviously it’s not all black and white, right?

> up-to-the-minute current moral views

“You shall not steal” is the eighth commandment from the Bible, two thousand years ago.

So you don't read or enjoy any books about people that have broken any commandments?

You can enjoy a book while still noting that the characters in it are not doing good things.

Yes, but the public denouncing of the books signifies that one views all books as moral instructions aka there are not fiction books.

Note that comment is toward "then going into rhapsodies about how free-spirited and unencumbered and holy and mad and visionary it all is". It is entirely valid comment. It is entirely 100% valid to make such comment even if you actually like the book.

What is bad is insisting that no one can point it out. That we all must pretend that acting like that is being cool free-spirit and visionary. That we cant analyze a book and make conclusions about what it celebrates, what it criticizes and what it just describes without any value judgement attached.

Somewhere along the lines people developed extremely thin skin toward what you can say about famous pieces of art. You cant really analyze them nor their characters. You must show only unfailing admiration of the characters and the book itself.

You definitely should have the right- and there should also be a firewall to socializing such experiments damage and fallouts. I just had also very negative experiences, where the mere thought experiment was considered "heresy" and as an attempt to recruit people for such a lifestyle. I can defend the freedom while defending the freedom, while not pushing the freedom from consequences.

I'm not dissing the book, I'm dissing your comment.

Just jumping back to Scott for a moment though, one suspects he probably does enjoy books about people who have broken commandments. "A terrible book" about "terrible people" suggests both that the people are terrible and that the book itself is poorly written. There are two concepts there to grasp. He's leaving the option open of a wonderful book about "terrible people".

That was always one of the appeals of the Seinfeld show for example. Well written show about some really horrible people. Fun for the whole family.

Maybe try reading the review first before criticising it.

I have, awhile ago. There isn’t much more to it than the quoted section.

It’s not really surprising to me that the author didn’t like it; Kerouac is probably the exact opposite person to him. But that doesn’t make it a good review.

Scott Alexander is a smart guy, but not everything needs to match taste. For instance, he describes the writer of the book Sadly, Porn as remarkably erudite and so on. The community he belongs to has the habit of describing each other as very smart, certainly, and particularly having pretensions to Hegel but overall he's quite trustworthy. In any case, on actually reading the book I found it less interestingly smart and more like something the character Salvatore in The Name of The Rose might say.

But text is a serialization of an idea and it's entirely possible I have the wrong deserializer. So that's one thing perhaps you and I now have in common. And I suspect Scott Alexander just lacks the deserializer for Jack Kerouac.

It’s true we should not judge people by today’s morals -one can’t be a visionary and predict tomorrows morals; but, that said it seems those people strayed well beyond what was acceptable even back then. So there is room for criticism.

It is less exciting than religious fundamentalism!

> It must be so exhausting to go through life only enjoying things that match one’s up-to-the-minute current moral views.

It is not that much exhausting to not celebrate abuse. In fact, most people are not abusers, most books are not celebrating it. But, there are subcultures that do treat abuse as a cool inspirable thing to do. That is what the quote references. And it is exhausting to be around such cultures once you have seen or understand consequences of what they celebrate. And that ideology is how one gets Epstein enablers.

Vice signaling and principled opposition against "acknowledging there are victims here" are weird and destructive taboos.

>I guess all biographies of influential people are basically out, as being successful in 1000BC or 1500AD required one to do things considered unethical today.

Maybe this means we should not celebrate success itself, but acknowledge harm many successful people do to make themselves famous, rich and powerful. But more importantly, this claim of yours is frequently just not true. It is something people say to defend their heroes, trying to defend unusually horrible stuff that back then people themselves found horrible back then, fought against and criticized a lot. You can write about bad stuff historical person caused without framing it as good or cool thing, really. You can even acknowledge that their opposition had a point.

We know that being abuser is something that makes certain people admire you more.

Its quite simplifying though, if you can discount a ton of people and experiences.

The best person to ever have lived, was thus a baby born to a prisoner in the 1600 which spend his life in prison doing nothing. We should all aspire and be inspired to be like that. Childlike and horrifically controlled by external systems.

I'm curious, do the people who love the book generally believe that the characters in the story are admirable? I remember a certain sick feeling, the same you get with any story that pulls you along to places you aren't sure you want to go. But at the same time I could relate to the "anything but this" spirit it held toward the culture at the time. I appreciated the mood and the restlessness of it, like watching the sunrise after a regrettable night out.

It has been a long time and now I feel like I should revisit it to see if that still holds.

I'm not very familiar with Kerouac, but I've at least heard people talk about it. It was far less impactful, but reading the Scott Alexander review, the very first thing that comes to mind is SLC Punk! Of course SLC Punk! makes its message pretty explicit, and by the end the main character learns that living so hedonistically was always selfish / immature / destructive / etc.

When I was a kid, I was very sad for the last half of SLC Punk! Like so many stupid kids, I was sure that I was oppressed and my angry instincts had some sort of real defiance and valor to them. And of course, just like the movie, a bit of life experience and maturity revealed the lie. I rewatched the movie recently as an adult (~late 30s) it was a totally different experience. The end of the movie felt a bit like a mercy. (which I'm sure is what the director intended)

I say this only because I've never heard people talk about Kerouac in this way, but I also think the last time I heard anyone talk about Kerouac was back in college; back when we could still lie to ourselves about the nature of (stupid, teenage) rebellion. Back when we had no inkling just how selfish or privileged we were.

I very much relate to the SLC Punk experience. The movie that came to mind for me as I was writing my comment was Dazed and Confused, it brings back that same feeling. One of the big questions I have now about Kerouac and On The Road is how much self-awareness he found. My understanding is that he was an essential part of the vanguard of American counter culture, a flawed prophet that can still be appreciated on some level.

I interestingly came to a pretty similar conclusion about Kerouac around the same time as this reviewer, and brought it up in my review of Henry Miller’s book on Big Sur (which I can highly recommend): https://kamranjon.com/writings/henry-miller-and-the-big-sur....

Was about to comment, anyone who finds themselves bouncing off Kerouac could do worse than read Miller. The latter is more like your first torrid love affair versus the former’s first giggling glimpse at a porno mag.

I have had my on the road phase when I was around 18 when I read the book but I did not vibe at all with it. I found all the characters highly unlikeable and couldn't help to think that I much better friends, even my wildest ones. But I wasn't wild enough I guess because I actually managed to finish the book, like a well behaved schoolboy.

Also it's terribly boring

Around the same time I first read On The Road, my wiser than should be possible mother said "Oh, you need to read this too" and it was "Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg", written by Carolyn Cassady. Rips the band aid right off of those sexist abuser of innocents, those utter assholes. They write great literature, and the fact that they expose their own terrible ethics bare, but surrounded by non-condemning language is the trick. They never hid their nature, but America never realized what they were praising, not really. Which is all so American!

> screwing women whom they promise to marry and then don’t.

It really is unfortunate that man's sex drive is above and beyond the level he can achieve without subterfuge (at best) and violence (at worst).

The deep pockmarks in Scott Alexander's hands

left from so strongly clutching his pearls

will take an eternity to de-dimple.

TIL I learned that not liking a-holes and to find the story their repititive adventures boring is pearl-clutching

no, just expressing outrage over the characters' values in a On the Road is. Judging some beat literature as if it had promised sober insight, ethical maturity, and durable philosophical yield is like taking a classic of rock music (e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody) and saying "this makes no fucking sense, its flamboyant garbage, no structural rigor whatsoever - go listen to beethoven."

if you read on the road thiking you're going to get carefully distilled philosophical and moral clarity, you're in the wrong Wendy's sir.

Where you see outrage, I see frustration from forcing oneself to read something everyone told you was a must-read

> carefully distilled philosophical and moral clarity

I wasn't looking for moral clarity, I was looking for something interesting to read about the world they live in, some insight

From the review posted above:

"But this is supposed to be okay, because they are visionaries. Their vision is to use the words “holy”, “ecstatic”, and “angelic” at least three times to describe every object between Toledo and Bakersfield. They don’t pass a barn, they pass a holy vision of a barn, a barn such as there must have been when the world was young, a barn whose angelic red and beatific white send them into mad ecstasies. They don’t almost hit a cow, they almost hit a holy primordial cow, the cow of all the earth, the cow whose dreamlike ecstatic mooing brings them to the brink of a rebirth such as no one has ever known."

So, he went into a Taco Bell and was mad that his Beefy 5-Layer Burrito wasn't actually the Wendy's Big Bacon Classic Triple that he wanted, got it.

Meh. You could also say that he went to the italian restaurant and the pasta was undercooked.

I understand the argument but what is the "dish" OTR is serving ?

So instead of using a metaphor, can you tell us what you experienced when reading the kind of lines he is referring to when you read the book ?

OTR is "serving" beat literature. But that whole framing of art critique is problematic, it's a very "what do I get out of this?" instead of "what IS this, exactly?" I think what is abrasive about this review is that it's a voice of a picky consumer rather than someone who appreciates art. Like a demanding tourist in an italian village, snapping his fingers at the native waiters and complaining in english that his spaghetti is too aldente, because back at olive garden it's nice and soft. You get what you give, and this is not a generous review.

What I personally experienced is not very relevant, but I was moved by the book - whether it's positive or negative doesn't really matter - it's jazz.

Kind of is. The point of fiction is to speculate. Judging the characters is fine but the commenter above almost seems to take it personally that the characters are morally ambiguous people - but that's what fiction is meant to explore.

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