On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Finished May 28, 2026
I feel like I should start by saying I had no idea what I was getting into. Not only was I going in blind, but the book I’d been gifted was “The Original Scroll” version, not the censored & edited version published originally. In “The Original Scroll” we see absolutely no censorship and names are real people, not legally-palatable and libel-compliant aliases.
The solid pages of text–no paragraph spacing, no indents, no dialogue isolation–were a bit off-putting at first. For a minute I considered buying a copy of the not-scroll version but I’m glad I stuck with this one. It reminded me of back in the day when my friends would be high out of their fucking minds, telling me insane, incoherent stories at faster than full speed, desperate to vomit out their words and be heard and understood. So I read “On the Road” with that in mind and the chaos became kind of endearing and nostalgic.
“The schedule is this: I came off work a half hour ago. In that time, Neal is screwing Louanne at the hotel and gives me time to change and dress. At one sharp he rushes from Louanne to Carolyn—of course neither of them knows what’s going on–and screws her once, giving me time to arrive at one-thirty. Then he comes out with me—first he has to beg with Carolyn who’s already started hating me—and we come here to talk till six in the morning. We usually spend more time than that but it’s getting awfully complicated and he’s pressed for time. Then at six he goes back to Louanne—and he’s going to spend all day tomorrow running around to get the necessary papers for their divorce. Louanne’s all for it but she insists on screwing in the interim. She says she loves his big cock—so does Carolyn—so do I.” I nodded as I always do.
I won’t lie, that quote from Allen (talking to Jack) and Jack’s simple “I nodded as I always do” is what kept me reading this thing in the beginning. Something about it made me go, “ah, okay, I see what I’m dealing with here.”
My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it’s bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.
At night in this part of the West the stars, as I had seen them in Wyoming, are as big as Roman Candles and as lonely as the Prince who’s lost his ancestral home and journeys across the spaces trying to find it again, and knows he never will.
Rating: ★★★★
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