Column(Re)read a book. Sustain your mind.

I first read On the Road when I was 20. It was, as they say, the right time. I had just returned from yet another leave of absence (“leaves of presence,” I would later call them) from my East Coast university. That year, I had managed to cover ground cross-country to San Francisco, north to the Arctic working tugs, back to the lower 48, overseas to Europe, and finally to Africa, where I headed up the Nile as far as my body could stand it. Now here I was, happily weathered and back in Boston, way wined up and sitting across a barroom table from my favorite (and at the moment incredulous) professor: “Are you f***ing kidding me?” he slurred. “You never read Jack?!” “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I moaned. “Kerouac. The Beat God. [Jazz hands.] Alright, alright.” The next day I bought a used paperback. It had a picture of a blazing sun on the cover.

The book sang to me. Being on the backside of many journeys, it was more of an uncanny companion (had Jack been with me?) than an inspiration. But there it was, a perfect, almost musically rendered travelogue of bar stories and holy road tales – the kind I had been gathering and was just beginning to learn how to tell. It was what the road sounded like. It was how it felt.

The novel, largely based on Kerouac’s real-life experiences, is the first-person reminiscence of the 20-something Sal Paradise (Jack). It takes place over the waning years of the 1940s, during which time Sal meets and then “absorbs” his pal Dean Moriarty (based on Jack’s real-life companion Neal Cassady). Dean is an iconic symbol of the fading American frontier. Raised in the rail yards of the West by a now-lost alcoholic hobo father, he’s wired to explore with abandon a world whose post-war boundaries are closing in (“a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles”), making him a maniac by society’s standards and a winged, yet sad, Beat hero, saint and angel by Sal’s. Together and apart, they crisscross the highways of America (mostly blue at the time), intersecting on and off with their sometimes like-minded crew of contemporaries (almost all based on Kerouac’s circle of friends, including soon-to-be notables such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs).

The story is of adventure nonpareil. It’s a bop-and jazz-infused, abstract Huck Finn meets Moby Dick on wheels—a purely American tale complete with an intrepid search for a lost father, fearless in its exploration of time (everything is epic; a few hours passing through a meaningless town is worthy of its own mythologizing) and space (no heretofore secret place is off-limits, from the darkest bar at dawn to the dankest Mexican brothel). And the characters know it’s all pure life and they embrace it every inch of the way. Sal’s oft-quoted whoop:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’

Like I said, I was 20 and the time was right. As it had been for untold millions of young Americans, On the Road was perfect fodder for me as I set out to explore life unknown. I saw it as an anthem, really, for brave, invincible and outward-bound youth. And now I wanted to be a writer.

I decided that I would spend my last year as an undergraduate buttoning down a lit degree and writing a thesis on Jack’s book (and his more experimental Visions of Cody). As part of my “research,” I found myself a dropout once more and headed back to San Francisco, in part to explore the Great Man’s haunts and dives. Reading my own shoddy poems, drinking to excess and listening to anyone who would tell me a Jack story, it quickly became apparent that the now-dead writer was buried under a mountain of hangers-on and cultural noise. The hype was as immeasurable in the 1980s as it was when the book was first published in 1957. Worse, in fact. And from what I could gather, Kerouac never did get used to his own celebrity, and his work and life suffered greatly.

Though some intermittently great achievements did come—The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, a few others – he never achieved the success or creative reach of these two books (On the Road and Cody, respectively). Jack eventually drank himself back full circle, seemingly unlearning the world, surrendering whatever claims to enlightenment he may have achieved, and dying a pitiful alcoholic’s death in 1969. His final days were clouded by all-too-public rants of bigotry and self-obsession.

So I focused my work on the words, setting out to examine the purely literary aspects of the novels. I brattily teased out the influence of Proust, Joyce and Céline. I fought with a professor who refused to read my thesis (while Kerouac’s female characters can be thin and leave something to be desired on every front, I never bought the misogyny charges). I avoided the bloated and self-aggrandizing I-knew-the-Beats biographies. I protected Jack’s words at every turn. I needed his books to be legitimate. I thought the world did too.

And when I was done I put On the Road away. While I did keep traveling for a number of years (I was a real pro for a while), eventually I got married, returned to my hometown of Detroit and had kids, got a dog and gave up the road. The book (now a first edition purchased to celebrate the completion of my thesis) was consigned to a shelf. Jack was in my past. I did become a writer, though. A journalist. But I never wrote a novel about my travels. One day, I always thought.

II.

My kids are both off to college now, having their own great adventures. My oldest has read On the Road. My youngest (whom I named Cody, incidentally) says he’ll get around to it one day. Meanwhile, I’m wondering what my 50s are going to look like, sitting back to catch my post-parenting breath (like it ever really ends) and thinking of what it would be like to be on the road again. I do live in the San Francisco area, though I seldom go to Jack’s beloved North Beach bars. In fact, I don’t go to bars much at all.

Last weekend, I reread the book. Again I heard music, although it sounded a little bit different than it did a quarter-century ago. I’m a hell of a better reader now than I was then, and I know my jazz (I get the references to Miles and Bird and Billie). I also know what happened to poor Jack, who passed at 47, a year younger than I am today. (I may not be a famous novelist, but I’m alive. I no longer drink.) And interestingly, maybe sadly, this time I couldn’t read the words without hearing Jack’s actual voice. (I’ve heard endless tape recordings of his readings since I first read him.) It’s that signature Lowell, Mass. slur, with its boozy Beat rhythms and accentuations. Unmistakable.

But here’s the rub: This time around, I saw the road from a very different angle. Without the roar of youth, the sentences popped. It’s as if I first read the book while singing along at a rock show and today, well, it’s clearer now – clearer, even, than when I struggled so hard to give Jack his academic due. It speaks of becoming the weather (“The atmosphere and I became the same”) and the whoops scream “we are here now” – be here now. A portend, perhaps, of the Buddhist philosophies that would entrance and perhaps save some of that generation, including its most noted survivors, Ginsberg and the great poet Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums.)

I missed this quote the first time around. It’s Dean talking to Sal about a couple of  “squares” they traveled with for a short spell, who were in the front seat:

Now you just dig them in front. They have worries, they’re counting the miles, they’re thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they’ll get there – and all the time they’ll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won’t be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end. Listen! Listen! 

Today, I realize something new about Jack’s road. Or maybe I just have to see it differently. Now the book is no longer about being brave and hip and Beat – and it’s not about getting somewhere. It’s about being present. It’s about “it,” as Sal and Dean discover together. And though I may have thought I got “it” back then, I didn’t.

Revisiting On the Road, I see something that I couldn’t know as a young man – and certainly not as the young man who judged and tormented his older self for so long for choosing a road less dangerous than the one he traveled in his younger days. I see that the road never ends and I know this is good news for an older person who, unlike Jack, survived his own life to live and work and read another day. My road today no longer calls for the wild whoop! of a daredevil, but rather for the measured and accepting smile of an adult allowing himself to experience new things as each day unfurls. Know this about Jack’s book: Whether you’ve read it before or wisely decide to read it for the first time, it’s not just for the young. It’s a tome for seekers – no matter your age.

And now, I still think of On the Road. And I still think of Dean Moriarty. Maybe I’ll write that book.

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson’s biweekly feature, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examines issues in publishing.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

InPrint: Les Histoires De Paris & Two Novel Additions

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Book ‘Em: 10 Best Reads from 2011

Top Image: Caveman Chuck Coker

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EcoSalon recently published the hit article, “20 Must Read Books for Women,” in which you probably noticed a few books you’ve read and a few others that you’d like to read, as well. What you might have also noticed was that the list included no books written by men.

Might there be must-reads for women written by male authors? We’re not talking about tomes that you’d file under the “how to better understand the blue side of the species” (read: self-help for guys, porn, or maybe bios on Messrs. Churchill or Jordan). Just solid works, by men, that might be of such great value to a female audience that someone might place them in the “don’t miss” bin.

Continuing the series of must read books, we’re offering an addendum our previous list and presenting five books written by men that we think would be great for women readers. And as a yin to our yang, noting that the guys ought to be reading more essentials by women, we’re also offering five books written by women that would do well on any man’s bookshelf.

Five books for women, written by men:

1. The Garden of Eden – Ernest Hemingway

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Bravado and bulls have had Papa pegged as guy’s writer going back to “The Sun Also Rises” (1926) and Jake Barnes’ classic last line to Lady Brett Ashley: “Isn’t it pretty to think so.” But Ernest Hemingway remains a quintessential American master, whose crisp, quick sentences act as simple brush stokes to create unflinchingly real and complex images, relationships and storylines. In “The Garden of Eden” (published posthumously in 1986) he shows a depth and tenderness that’s unburdened by Great War or greater fish. Here, Hemingway tells the tale of a love triangle, androgyny and gender reversal, putting down his gloves and allowing access to a wide(r?) range of readers into his inimitable world and style.

2. The World According to Garp – John Irving 

(Paperback)

In his 1978 classic “The World According to Garp,” John Irving’s  male hero navigates an obstacle course of a life chock full of tricky sexual relations, male vulnerability and ignorance, and sometimes extreme feminism. The book features bold, loving and dangerous female characters (as well as a fantastic cross-dressing nurse), who surround Garp as he struggles to find his place in life and tell his story. Irving handles characters of both sexes extraordinarily well, displaying an ambidexterity that’s not easy to come by and speaks to the difficultly of making book suggestions like these difficult in the first place.

3. True Grit – Charles Portis

(Paperback)

A classic western with uncharacteristic depth, Charles Portis’ “True Grit” (1968) lacks none of gun-slinging, foul language and, yes, grit of the greatest American entries in this genre. Its character sensitivities and ambiguities, however, are seldom seen in such novels, save perhaps in that of the work of the great Cormac McCarthy (“All the Pretty Horses,” “Blood Meridian,” “No Country for Old Men”). Unlike McCarthy, Portis’ bleak landscape offers up a sad humor regarding the human condition, as heroine Mattie Ross recalls the great adventure of her childhood in which she seeks to avenge the death of her father with the help renegade lawmen. Read the book before seeing the Coen brothers’ super remake of the John Wayne classic.

4. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace

(Paperback)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the current generation of male authors’ inability to deal with sex and sexual issues. Some, like NYU’s Katie Roiphe, point to a reactive, “wimping out” of the sensitive male, a “new purity” of “self-conscious paralysis.” David Foster Wallace, however, had a knack for staring down our culture on many issues, including sexual relations. In this 1998 collection of short stories (a number of which bear the book’s title), Wallace explores many modern themes, including sexual alienation. Never an easy read, Wallace is always worth the effort. His short stories and essays are an excellent way access to his work and an alternative for those who are reticent to scale his dense masterpiece, “Infinite Jest.”

5. American Pastoral – Philip Roth

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Up there with Norman Mailer as the male writer most consistently pummeled for unrepentant misogyny, big bad Philip Roth’s primal scream of “Portnoy’s Complaint” (his celebrated 1969 novel that so prevalently featured its main character’s penis) has softened into an older, wiser, sadder sigh in this masterwork. It’s not so much that Roth seems to have rethought his view of the relationship between men and women, per se, but more like the evidence is in that, as his characters have aged, infatuation with that issue is somehow beside the point – and was perhaps a red herring all along. Here, a man’s traditional middle class experience is upended by the historical elements and trace madness that weaved their way through the American landscape in second half of 20th century.

And five books for men, written by women:

6. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece (which made our previous must-read list) presents a futuristic nightmare for all women, where a male-dominated extremist faction has taken over the nation and created a world where women are forbidden to read, work, or have their own name; their roles, from servant to child bearer, are determined by the men who control their lives. The chilling effect of the story is made more severe by the tone of Atwood’s prose that offers emotions and imagery of true fear in a world whose potential “realness” (think a Western version of Taliban Afghanistan) will make any reader shudder.

7. A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

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Magnificent craftsmanship and a unique use of postmodern technique give Jennifer Egan’s recent novel (2010) a cross-time, cross-genre sensibility, and a certain humanity that one might find lacking in the cooler works of Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and other well-known, male postmodern masters. Egan’s book opens with story of a kleptomaniac woman and jumps from chapter to chapter, with each one bringing a seemingly ancillary character into the spotlight without regard to chronology or consistency of style. What emerges is a sense of realism and emotional breadth that could not come from a simple “once-upon-a-time” experience.

8. The Young Romantics – Daisy Hay

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Our lists’ only non-fiction entry is a biographical work that not only reexamines the lives of some history’s most famous men, but does so in the context of the women who shared their lives, offering up a new, more accurate approach to the entire genre. Daisy Hay looks at Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and the other Romantic Era authors, examining  their lives as unified matrix, rather than as purely individual stories, showing how their interpersonal relationships affected both their creative and personal selves. Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein” (a certain contender for this half of our list) is in fact the epicenter of the story, lending a more feminist (and in this case accurate) approach to exploring the period. Most important, though, is that the book is just a great read, with the feel of excellent historical fiction. Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

9. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather

Paperback/(Kindle)

Willa Cather’s evokes the emerging American West by eliciting depth and complexity from basic character archetypes to capture a sense of the nation in a uniquely powerful manner. “Death Comes for the Archbishop” (1927) tells the story of two men, Bishop Jean Marie Latour (an intellectual “tower”) and his friend Father Joseph Vaillant (a valiant defender of the faith) who are charged with taking over a Spanish diocese in New Mexico after the territory is acquired by the United States. The works taps into the relationship between ideas and the frontier landscape and as such rings true as an authentic American tale without swollen bravado and fanfare.

10. A Spy in the House of Love – Anais Nin

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Anais Nin’s 1954 novel emerges from the mind of Sabina, a married woman involved in a number of adulterous affairs, who sees herself a spy or witness to her own experiences. Nin’s dreamy, yet unflinching  style (that also lends itself so well her erotic writings) creates a intense psychological atmosphere, where the reader crawls inside the thought processes and sensitivities of a woman as she betrays the man she loves in order to explore her own personal nuances. Inside info, guys? Maybe. An ethereal, semi-autobiographical tale that offers an intimate view into a woman’s complicated life.

Main Image: Valerie Everett

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