Book Returns
The Path Less Beaten
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
by Stephen H. Webb
One of the casualties of the attack on the Vietnam War was the bourgeois ideal of moderation. Before the sixties, entry into the middle class required a disciplining of desire on behalf of family, church, and nation. When political radicals began persuading America’s youth that it took more courage to evade the draft than to serve their country, they substituted the ideal of self-fulfillment—“self-actualization” in the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s more altruistic sounding words—for self-sacrifice. Moderation was out. Excess was in.
The pleasure of middle-class life is found in its respect for limits. The days are short, one has duties and responsibilities and a place in the world, and goals must be set and accomplished. Sixties radicals saw this conformity as the source of every social ill, from nationalism to sexism. They believed that the pursuit of personal freedom could transform society. They hoped they could end the Vietnam War by undermining the bourgeois ideal of moderation.
Although linking sexual liberation and draft evasion was a brilliant rhetorical ploy, and an effective recruiting slogan, the idea that transgression in the pursuit of freedom (or pleasure) can cure social problems was still an untested article of faith. Sixties radicals needed a new scripture to justify their creed, and they found it in the “Beat” novelist Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Kerouac actually supported the Vietnam War, but they were determined to enlist him in their cause, even if they had to misread him to do so.
Thanks to the sixties, Kerouac’s novel, which was published in 1957, has become a cliché, but the damage it caused should not be underestimated. On the Road has inspired countless young men to make excess and self-fulfillment their cardinal virtues and thus to remain mired in their immaturity. It has also prevented many young writers from advancing beyond the aesthetic stage of pouring their hearts out in confessional dribble.
To many astute readers, the novel seems more like propaganda for the permissive society than a work of art. It is a deeply flawed novel, both stylistically and morally, but the sixties should not be given the last word on its meaning and significance. On the Road is a surprisingly melancholy book, and its originality renders every subsequent expression of youthful angst derivative and cheap. It is not an advertisement for the sixties version of personal freedom, but a warning against it.
That is not to say that the novel is not frequently chaotic. Kerouac wrote quickly, without much revision, and his spontaneous style was both hailed and dismissed by his contemporaries. Truman Capote wryly commented that what Kerouac did was typing, not writing. The finished product, written in three weeks, was a continuous roll of single-spaced paper 120 feet long. It looks like a sacred script, and it is treated that way, too: It is currently on a thirteen-city tour of museums and libraries across America.
At his best, Kerouac infused the written word with the sound of vocal speech. It is a book meant to be read out loud. In a way, Kerouac’s spontaneous writing is the literary equivalent of Pentecostal speaking in tongues.
Sal & Neal
The narrator, Sal Paradise (a stand-in for Kerouac), is a young writer in search of his destiny. He becomes intrigued by Dean Moriarty (Kerouac’s real-life friend Neal Cassady), a fast-talking womanizer fresh out of jail and overflowing with a lust for life. Through three years of riding busses, hitchhiking, and driving across America, Sal tries to keep up with Dean, but their trips become increasingly manic and pointless.
Kerouac describes Sal as “mad to be saved,” and Dean as “a holy goof.” Dean’s heightened consciousness of the perceptual details of the world is compared to “a monk peering into manuscripts.” Only the purest of souls is able to meet the challenges of living on the go, with no money and nowhere to call home. Being on the road was a kind of penance that had to be paid before any destination could be reached.
Stephen H. Webb is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Wabash College. His latest book is The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound(Brazos Press). He, his wife, and their three children are members of the Lutheran Church (ELCA).
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