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Date Posted: 16:03:51 02/27/02 Wed
Author: mvd
Subject: Well...
In reply to: mt. healthy mountaineer 's message, "ANHOW REview of Books: "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac" on 14:31:21 02/26/02 Tue

I read the book years ago, but it seems to me that I enjoyed it quite a bit more than you. This book signals very deeply the influence of eastern thought on the west. You gloss over the eastern references, but in fact the book is heavily influenced by eastern thought, Taoism, Buddhism and Zen. The story is "plotless" and "meandering" as you call it precisely because the heroes' spiritual journey was much the same, and because in so many ways, there is no plot to life. Life is, essentially plotless. There is no great reward, there is no plan, save that which we give it. The two heroes of the story are caught between their inherent knowledge that life is meaningless and their desire to have meaning, and so drink themselves silly.

Your dismissal of the book likely comes from your abhorrence of Buddhism, though you really don't understand what Buddhism is about. On the Road is a book about men who have left the little safety nest of the bourgeois lifestyle, the accoutrements of a steady job, religion, and home life, which are all inherently meaningless things that get one nowhere unless one is somewhere to begin with. Can you dig it, man?

I give the book an A-. The minus is because the book shamefully describes two men who are lost and go in search of themselves... a fruitless journey, doubtless, but every man must go through it in his own way. Siddhartha, Jesus, Dean, Jack Kerouac, and even the Mount Healthy Mountaineer.

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