3. In 1952 (when people still wrote letters to each other), Allen Ginsberg penned these words to Kerouac about the manuscript of On the Road: "I don't see how it will ever be published, it's so personal, it's so full of sex language, so full of our local mythological references, I don't know if it would make sense to any publisher." What is your reaction to this?
I'm not so much surprised by the book's being published as by the fact that it became as popular as it is. Maybe the fact that it was controversial in its time, made people want to read it, but now it seems kind of outdated, particularly in its treatment of women's and racial issues.
The book is beautifully written, and the fact that it is so personal, is one of its stronger points. The fact that Kerouac feels so deeply about the places he has been, and life itself, is what drives the strong descriptions, and makes the reader visualize towns like New Orleans, and Los Angeles, with the same passion that Sal describes it.
As for the sex language, while certain parts are definitely sensual, particularly scenes between Dean and Marylou, and Sal just sees women as sex objects, the book seems kind of tame by modern standards. While in one part Dean is described as "rubb[ing] his fly, stuck his finger in Marylou's dress, slurped up her knee..." (145) Now we have people doing that and much more on TV, and describing everything in books and on the internet. Even if the '50s were kind of repressed, literature is always pushing the buttons, and as a book that in its time would have been controversial, with the added bonus of being well written, certain publishers could be interested in that.
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