".....burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars....."; and that's exactly what Sal Paradise and his "hero" Dean Moriarty do. Screaming across the North American landscape, consuming everything in its path. A must read to understand the restless, American heart. Kerouac (Sal) and his real-life cohorts were the 20th century pioneers who were re-discovering this country - and its spirit. People who don't understand this book and its main characters (or choose not to) fail to realize that this spirit was being lost during this country's recovery from the Second World War. The Cold War, and McCarthy-ism were forcing everyone to conform and fall in line out of paranoia. Even though it wasn't actually said within its pages, Kerouac challenged this thought with On The Road. His words speak as loud now as they did back then. Read this book; re-discover the American Spirit; and burn, burn, burn.

Dean,..How I'd give anything to just spend a couple weeks on the road with you. Wonderful book, perhaps the most heart-wrenching book ever written in the English language, besides Grapes of Wrath. I feel I understand what "it" really is, after reading this book for the 3rd time in my life, and it's not god or anything silly like that,...it's what Sarte was driving at when he described depression as being the gulf between what is reality and what we think reality "should be"...it's the unreachable "should be" that is the all-sufficient destination. "The road is life",..choke. Language fails me, but I felt "it" last night as I finished the book,..that point with Dean buying the little crystal from the Indian girl in southern Mexico,..the smallest purest crystal,..Yes, it is imponderable, but what a privilege to be human, to read this wonderment of human creation, to be part of "it"

I approached this title with all the expectations fostered by many friends endless promotions. I did my best to like it, to find some secret meaning, some redeeming quality within, to no avail. Actually finishing the book was an accomplishment, in my opinion. Ultimately I found the book aimless, soulless, and the promoter of everything negative about the human species. I know this sounds harsh, but time after time I felt let down by On the Road.

No, I don't "dig" it, Dean.