On the Road by Jack Kerouac

A kid I worked with at summer camp had a copy in his cabin of just about everything Kerouac ever wrote, and my art teacher rambled on and on about how revolutionary On the Road was, so I figured to be considered educated, I had to read it.

I am not entirely sure what my final verdict on this book should be. From what I can tell, it was just the typical quasi-philosophical, drinking-smoking-sleeping-around searching for the meaning of life but never doing anything productive, let alone finding answers for the questions everyone asks, sort of novel. Pointless, in other words.

I think I can see what appealed so much to that kid at camp, though. Hitchiking repeatedly across the country, meeting scads of eccentric people, exploring the world, doing whatever whenever, would all be quite attractive to a teenaged boy, I think. But not to me. I would react similarly to the women in the book. They were more apt to settle down and stay in one place after a while. On the Road was an interesting social experiment, but ultimately a faulty one. The nomadic Buddhist lifestyle doesn't really answer anything.