Final reaction to On The Road

While reading this book, I was most struck by the youthfulness portrayed in the writing. Everything is fast, entire stretches of road can be described in a paragraph. The characters are bold, sharp, and move as fast as the road does. There is rarely a moments rest in the book, and I think that the "beat" generation, (as Kerouac coined it) was like this. No one was sure what it meant, or why it was important, but everyone understood that IT was important. In one conversation in the book, Dean and Sal discuss it in a car full of strangers. They share innate, seemingly unimportant conversation about cut mountains with their minds as children in cars. About running along side the metallic machines, chasing the wilderness outside. Yet somehow they both arrive at the same need of IT. I think that the memoir is really a pursuit for that imaginary feeling, that is impossible to describe, yet impossible to live without. In On the Road nothing is more important. That is why Kerouac can spend a page and a half describing how a saxophone player plays. How he swings with the flow of IT. They way he vigorously attacks progressions, confirming and denying his possession of IT. With such incredible invigorating writing Kerouac sparks a fire in the reader, making them want to search for IT. Such writing is rare, and powerful. Overall the book is an explanation really, of what a generation was, and what it means now.