Calling on Dean Moriarty

On The Road is a longtime favorite. BigSleep666 asked, “Did you finish it and say ‘That’s great literature’?” No, but we didn’t say that about anything when we read it. And it’s a wave we frequently return to.

Of course, when people reflect on OTR, it’s usually on Neal Cassady’s (Dean) talking, his mad driving, and how puppy-dog Jack (Sal) is. Kerouac’s closing bits, which he famously read on the Steve Allen “Tonight Show”, talk about finding fathers, and not finding fathers, and “Don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear?” Sweet stuff.

Especially when you consider the opening, which we think has some of the most overlooked opening lines for any book, and in a way provides the impetus for the entire story:

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.

Everything dead. Yes yes yes. Fuck that “no woman / no cry” business! (Sorry, Bob.)

We are cheered by Marc Thorman’s current project, On The Road: A Kerouac Circus, peforming John Cage transformation on Kerouac’s work, including ambient sounds from the locales mentioned in OTR. Nice.