Book Return: On the Road

The October issue of Touchstone features the second Book Return: Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The writer, Stephen Webb, did a nice job with it. Link. Excerpts:

Americans have always been on the move, but Kerouac's novel was the first to portray our national restlessness as a moral duty, rather than a geographical or economic necessity. He wrote his novel just when the idea of the family vacation was becoming a cherished institution, but he did not think travel was a good way to find rest and relaxation. His road was not, contrary to sixties interpretations, the fast lane of immediate gratification and mindless pleasure. Instead, it was the ultimate test of both physical and spiritual endurance.

The westward portions of Sal's travels are full of descriptions of the vast, expansive countryside, and Kerouac seems to be saying that the potential of human freedom is unlimited. The return trips, however, are dark and foreboding. To be on the road is to be forced to face the full weight of your freedom. . . .

A year before he died of alcohol abuse in 1969 at the age of 47, he appeared, inebriated, on William F. Buckley's Firing Line. Buckley was confused by this strange guest. Buckley wanted a good argument, but Kerouac was so alienated by the role people expected him to play that he could not take anything seriously. Kerouac had lost his battle with alcohol, but he had also lost the battle over his own literary legacy. The sixties generation had turned him into a spokesman for unrestrained transgression, when his novel actually underscored the tragic dimension of moral excess.

Kerouac spent his last years living with his mother. He gave up the road, stayed at home, and just wanted to be left alone. This seeker after the beatific was truly beat. Some of his fans were baffled by what they saw as a conservative turn late in his life. What they did not understand was how conservative he always was.