On The Road to Nowhere

[LMNO]

Slate Star Codex does a takedown of On The Road:

On The Road is a terrible book about terrible people. Kerouac and his terrible friends drive across the US about seven zillion times for no particular reason, getting in car accidents and stealing stuff and screwing women whom they promise to marry and then don't.

Dean has stolen about a dozen cars. He has married one woman, had an affair with another, played the two of them off against each other, divorced the first, married the second, deserted the second with a young child whom she has no money to support, gone back to the first, dumped the first again so suddenly she has to become a prostitute to make ends meet. Later he will go back to the second, beat the first so hard that he injures his thumb and has to get it amputed, break into the second's house with a gun to kill her but change his mind, desert the second again also with a child whom she has no money to support, start dating a third, desert the third also with a child whom she has no money to support, and go back to the second, all while having like twenty or thirty lesser affairs on the side.

(much, much more at the link)

[hooplala]

I never got through more than ten or so pages in that book... is that really what happens??

[LMNO]

Among other things, yes.

[hooplala]

Among other things, yes.

So that's why they called them the Beat Generation.

[LMNO]