After months of forcing myself to read chapter after chapter, I finally had to put the book down.
It just was not pulling me in as a reader, as I wasn’t fully invested in Dean or Sal’s story. I knew what I was getting into beforehand: the plot-defying set up of the Beatnik counter-culture. I really thought I would love it since I, too, have road-tripped across the country (though not in their vagabond style).
It just pained me to do it. Maybe the whole no plot idea really threw me off. I knew I wasn’t invested, but I tried to push through. I felt like since it was a culture-defining book, I had to read it, but man, it just felt like a chore.
Has this happened to y’all?
What book made you feel this way? Any stories that lacked in the beginning but ultimately pulled through by the end?
by Early-Leadership-662
2 Comments
I’ll never reread the book, but loved it as a teen.
I think Kerouac’s writing is very similar to reading Catcher in the Rye before adulthood. We just want to run away, consequences be damned. Once you become an adult and get a job and have bills to pay and find love, both Kerouac and Catcher completely change as your viewpoint ages and matures.
20 years later after first reading his blatherings and biographies, I consider Kerouac to be a rude mean stupid jerk, but consider Neal Cassady’s *The First Third* and William S. Burroughs *Junkie* to be two of my favorite books of all time. I ain’t no Beatnik, I just love real honest shit.
I agree – wildly overhyped, IMHO.