Did you ever wish to give up everything and hit the road? Well maybe you want to read this book first ;)
The main character and narrator, Sal Paradise, does exactly this, encountering an array of peculiar characters along the way. The book excels at showing the less extravagant side of such a vagabond life: the mundane car drives, waiting at bus / train stations, and hanging out with a group of people that you feel that you just don’t belong with.
Sal crosses the US several times, and Kerouac paints a nice portrait of the country, capturing unique traits of major cities: New York, Denver, New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. My favorite snippet (for obvious reasons) is from SF, particularly due to the way he captures the olfactory senses:
In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco…that pan-fried chow mein flavoured air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman’s Wharf - nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market Street chill beans, redhot, and french-friend potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that’s my ah-dream of San Francisco. Add fog, hunger-making raw fog, and the throb of neons in the soft night, the clack of high-heeled beauties, white doves in a Chinese grocery window… (p. 164 / 291)
But of course, we mustn’t forget Dean Moriarty. The impulsive, sweating, slightly crazed Dean always looking for “kicks” and the next thing / person / place to “dig”. At the start, you get the impression Sal looks up to him, as an inspiration of personal freedom and liberty. However, over time, Sal cares for him, sympathizes with him, and tries his best to protects him.
And in fact that was the point, and they all sat around looking at Dean with lowered and hating eyes, and he stood on the carpet in the middle of them and giggled - he just giggled. He made a little dance. His bandage was getting dirtier all the time; it began to flop and unroll. I suddenly realized that Dean, by virtue of his enormous series of sins, was becoming the Idiot, the Imbecile, the Saint of the lot. (p. 182 / 291)
This hectic life on the road becomes just one phase in life. One, that once settled, fits nicely into a collage book, or photo gallery on your phone, that you sweep through from the comforts of your couch. But was is worth it?
I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the ragedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. (p. 239 / 291)