I had a dream... Crazy Dream.. Review on On The Road - Jack Kerouac

So how does one go about writing a review for a book that does not have much of a story?

Why do you feel restless? Why does it feel that sometimes things are not going the way you want it? What sort of freedom are you looking for? And in what form? How do you plan to achieve that? Why do you feel you are going crazy? Or perhaps, the world is going crazy and you just want to run away...

So again I ask, how does one go about writing a review for a book that does not have much of a story? Because all the questions I have pondered uptil now, including this one is relevant with this book.

Continuing with my romance with books narrated in first person, this time I meet the really confused and restless Salvatore Paradise. However, in a manner much different from the norm, dear Sal is not the chief protagonist of this tale.. In fact, the story talks about the experiences of Sal in the experience-rich company of the overtly crazed Dean Moriarty and their life together as they travel across the United States ''On the Road''... As very aptly suggested by the title, it speaks about their life on the travel mode... So, is that all to it? Nothing much more than this?

Yes, that is all that is there to it... But no, because On the Road has much more to offer to you and me and to all that love life and everything about it...

Sal is going about his life, broken away from his wife under bitter circumstances.. He is in college and is writing a book when he hears about a very weird character called Dean Moriarty.. Dean, of the crazy world, in a prison ever since he can remember and wanting to be that intellectual.. Always wanting to have fun in life, always looking out for species of the opposite sex and have a tremendous pull on them.. Dean, via letters to Sal's friend, speaks about his desire to learn more about Nietzsche and all that Nietzsche stood for... Did not all that confuse you?

Well, Dean was all that.. Dean comes out of prison and out of Denver to meet Sal.. There he befriends Sal and wishes to learn the skills of writing from Sal, because to he wants to proceed on the learnings of Nietzsche of propounding his thoughts and passions creatively.. He was an extrovert's extrovert.. He was a con man who for the sake of his advantage would take the most astounding of decisions.. Yet, he was not a criminal.. Dean was a very complex character..

On the Road is a based on days following the Second World War and how the events, not in a direct sense, affected people.. Man constantly seeks freedom.. And he tries to exercise that freedom in all the ways he can.. He uses his sense of speech and the ability to communicate as a means of freedom of expression.. Finding freedom in music, drugs and distance, in addition, is what the book is all about.. Music, with its unlimited and sonorous attributes, with its variety of sinusoidal reaches, with its anger and its mellowness and its lilt also allows one to break his shackles and swim in its magical waves to unknown lands... Freedom can also be achieved by distancing yourself from the grips of your repetitive life.. by going out there and looking for that one thing.. the meaning of life...

Excited by the adventure and the promise that the road offers, Sal sets out on a tremendous journey across the country.. using his thumb as his guide to far off places and stealing as his means to have food.. Taking up petty jobs on reaching his destination and then again feeling restless and again coming back home.. Its an ongoing search for that thing again.. the life and the meaning of it.. What is so magical about the book is not only that it recounts the life on the road, it also tells about how we attach great importance to trivial things in life, how we worry over so much, including death, how we are slaves instead of being masters...

Dean, the crazy guy, is the heart of the story.. He is never unhappy, never strung out, never angry... He is always smiling, always jumping but one does not know why he does what he does.. Jack Kerouac speaks about Dean from a very personal view, because the most of the incidents encountered in the story are biographical with respect to Jack Kerouac.. Dean goes around ''digging'' people, he wants to learn from his heroes, he wants to be like them, because like them he wants to exercise and channel his emotions in all that he does... He just wants to do what HE wants to do, and seems to choose the best way that he can do that...

Shunned by critics, but hailed as one the best books of all time, you can get a pretty good (or a bad) picture from the all the ambiguities I have written... Each and every character that Sal and Dean meet on the course of their epic travels across the continent are very much memorable and of course, crazy.. There is the very intellectual and philosophical Carlo Marx, the dumb but nice guy Ed Dunkel, the mad and happy Raw Rawlins and Tim Gray, the drunken writer Hemmingway-lover Roland Major, there is Remi Bencoeur who likes Sal but hates all of Sal's friends, including Dean... Sal, who is eternally confused, always befriending Dean when all dismiss Dean as a crazed maniac who would never do any good...

And finally, the two instances, when Dean surprises Sal with his behaviour and another when Sal surprises Dean with his behaviour... But then, as they both find out, life is what you associate with it, happiness can be found almost anywhere, in the smiling brown eyes of the little girl next door, in the music that you hear everyday, in the books that you read everyday... in you...

So how does one go about writing a review for a book that does not have much of a story?