On the Road - Post 1

1. On the Road, while classified as fiction, is a loosely autobiographical account of the "Beatnik" writers' travels across America--narrated by Sal Paradise (AKA Kerouac).
What is your impression of Sal as a narrator? Reliable? Unreliable? Explain and cite the text for support.

When I answer the perennial question what are you reading? with On the Road, it has almost always been received with a look of hesitance, and something along the lines of ..So...do you like that beat stuff? Maybe the pool I've been sampling isn't diverse enough, but it seems to me that the beatniks have more skeptics nowadays than fans. In the ensuing conversations I've had about the book, people have called it self-indulgent, rambling, and pointless (although none tried to deny the obvious influence Kerouac had in his day). Only half way through the book myself, I haven't actually made up my mind on how I feel about Kerouac's prose, but I have noticed some patterns in how he, or Sal rather, narrates his travels, that I could either grow to appreciate and love, or could eventually find irritating and, potentially, self-indulgent. Kerouac's page-long paragraphs and rambling sentences carry the feeling of a breathless adventurer, energetic and ready to experience the the world, which I'm sure was intentional. However, there's a difference between including some seemingly insignificant anecdotes that subtly reveal something about the content of Sal's character or will somehow prove to be important later in the book, and just continuously filling pages with actually insignificant anecdotes.

At the point I am so far in the novel, it's hard to tell on which side of the line Kerouac stands. While I'm sure no author could receive this much acclaim by just aimlessly writing without any apparent gist, it's sometimes hard for me to see the significance in the details Sal/Kerouac includes in his prose. Take for example, Chapter 3, in which, among other things, Sal meets Eddie. During the latter leg of their trip in that particular chapter, the men are approached by a carnival worker and offered a job. The whole exchange takes a while and results in their refusal of the job, leaving them essentially in the same place they were before. Of course not everything in a book has to be of the utmost importance to the integrity of the novel and whatnot, and again I'm not far enough in to see if perhaps there's some significance in Sal's distaste for the carnival career scene. However, when you pick up a novel, you're in a way entrusting the author or narrator with the responsibility of entertaining you; of telling you a story. In that sense, I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced of Sal's reliability as a narrator, if what's at stake is my attention. It doesn't really matter how insanely interesting an adventure a character is having, if they include every single detail and dialogue that goes into that adventure, I can't promise I'm going to be interested the whole time. As I continue reading, what I'll mainly be looking for is some sort sign that all these details are leading somewhere.

Amid all these sometimes seemingly unnecessary details, I've also noticed Kerouac's tendency to unload a really profound statement quite casually. And, to counter pretty much everything I've just been saying, I was thinking that it's possible some of the scenarios that seem pointless and make you wonder why the author bothered to include them at all, merely serve the purpose of being a scenario in which these nuggets of insight can be said. For instance, in that same exchange with the carnival worker, his first line is: "You boys going to get somewhere, or just going?" (20). I really liked this line, because it does sort of epitomize the whole concept of the road and being on it. I guess Sal felt kind of the same way as he followed it with: "We didn't understand his question, and it was a damned good question." (20). In including these enlightening little quips, Paradise can easily be seen as reliable, as they appear pretty frequently. I'm guessing a lot of the people who didn't love Kerouac or On the Road figured the insightful bits weren't worth rooting through the superfluous description. I'm still not really sure myself, I'll get back to you.