Kerouac's writing style has attracted the attention of critics. On the Road has been considered by Tim Hunt to be a transitional phase between the traditional narrative structure of The Town and the City (1951) and the "wild form" of his later books like Visions of Cody (1972). [26] Kerouac's own explanation of his style in "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" (1953) is that his writing is like the Impressionist painters who sought to create art through direct observation. Matt Theado feels he endeavored to present a raw version of truth which did not lend itself to the traditional process of revision and rewriting but rather the emotionally charged practice of the spontaneity he pursued. [27] Theado argues that the personal nature of the text helps foster a direct link between Kerouac and the reader; that his casual diction and very relaxed syntax was an intentional attempt to depict events as they happened and to convey all of the energy and emotion of the experiences. [27] Music in On the Road [ edit ] It hardly mattered. On publication, Kerouac awoke to find himself famous. Just before midnight on 4 September 1957, Kerouac left his apartment on New York’s Upper West Side to wait at the 66th street news-stand for the next day’s edition of the New York Times. He had been tipped off that his novel was going to be reviewed by Gilbert Millstein, but he cannot have anticipated the critic’s excitement. Millstein declared that On the Road’s publication was “a historic occasion in so far as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in an age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlatives of fashion”. The novel, Millstein continued, was “the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as ‘Beat’, and whose principal avatar he is.” Other reviewers were also less than impressed. Phoebe Lou Adams in Atlantic Monthly wrote that it "disappoints because it constantly promises a revelation or a conclusion of real importance and general applicability, and cannot deliver any such conclusion because Dean is more convincing as an eccentric than as a representative of any segment of humanity." [19] While she liked the writing and found a good theme, her concern was repetition. "Everything Mr. Kerouac has to say about Dean has been told in the first third of the book, and what comes later is a series of variations on the same theme." [19] Dear Carolyn: Letters to Carolyn Cassady (1983) (1000 copies Edited By Arthur and Kit Knight) ISBN 0-934660-06-9 La vie est d'hommage, edition of all previously unpublished French writings, includes some non-fiction (written 1950-1965; published 2016)

In addition to it just being plain boring, this book is deeply problematic. Women are referred to as blondes, brunettes. There was a slur against the LGBTQIA+.Because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars...” a b c Brooks, David (October 2, 2007). "Sal Paradise at 50". The New York Times . Retrieved 16 April 2012.

Just look at contemporary literature, the voices we have, the stuff that's selling well on the literary market. A lot of that stuff is just workshop fiction that isn't going to last long in particular well-regard, but a lot of it is brilliant stuff, and far more literate, intelligent, and interesting than what this guy had to offer.

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I do wonder about the real life Dean Moriarty. Did you realize that he was the bus driver in Wolfe's Electric Kool-aid Acid Test as well as mentioned in several Grateful Dead songs? Something about that guy really insprired the artisits around him. From the get go, this is a stream of consciousness romp through North America. It seems like almost every city in the United States is mentioned at least once as Sal Paradise tells of his travels, the people he meets, those who join him, and his wild vagabond companion Dean Moriarity. I don't feel like the style of this book will appeal to everyone and I can easily see many losing interest part way in. But, if you are a fan of travelling in America, a scholar of literary genres, a hipster, and/or grew up in the 50s travelling the great American highways before interstates, you will find something in here for you.

The following year, in 1940, Kerouac began his freshman year as a football player and aspiring writer at Columbia University. However, he broke his leg in one of his first games and was relegated to the sidelines for the rest of the season. Although his leg had healed, Kerouac's coach refused to let him play the next year, and Kerouac impulsively quit the team and dropped out of college. He spent the next year working odd jobs and trying to figure out what to make of his life. He spent a few months pumping gas in Hartford, Connecticut. Then he hopped a bus to Washington, D.C., and worked on a construction crew building the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Eventually, Kerouac decided to join the military to fight for his country in World War II. He enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1943, but was honorably discharged after only 10 days of service for what his medical report described as "strong schizoid trends."On the Road has been an influence on various poets, writers, actors and musicians, including Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia, David Bowie and Hunter S. Thompson.

He commented on the difficulty he had reading the Beat novels. He had tried but he had been unable to finish any one of them. None of these people have anything interesting to say,” he observed, “and none of them can write, not even Mr. Kerouac.” What they do, he added, “isn’t writing at all—it’s typing.” Giroux subsequently rejected On the Road in 1951, and all other Kerouac novels submitted to him over the years. The 1951 rejection of On the Road effectively ended Kerouac's personal and professional relationship with Giroux, whom he had considered a friend, and his professional relationship with Harcourt Brace. It would be another six years before he was again published professionally, when Viking published On the Road at the urging of Malcolm Cowley.

The writing makes you feel the musics energy pulsating and driving - that is one of my favorite aspects of On the Road: Thomas Pynchon (13 June 2012). Slow Learner. Penguin Publishing Group. p.3. ISBN 978-1-101-59461-2.