On the Road

On The Road - On the Road - Jack Kerouac

"One day he (Johnny's brother) gave me a book that would become to me like a Koran. A brochure with ears, worn and stained with God knows what. "On the Road", written by some idiot with a strange name for sapo that was almost unpronounceable for my teenage language, which had found its way from the shelf my older brother to my greedy garrinhas. (...)
"On the Road" was life changing for me. "
"Already the" Howl "Ginsberg's me babbling like an idiot, surprised me that someone could regurgitate such honesty to the role." Johnny Depp

On "Howl," we already have here a nice post in previous pages, as well as other writers and outstanding works in the life of Depp.
Ha I'm behind the times On the road, and I could only book a short time ago. Could write this post about it, but not as well as someone who has read several times and as she says, is a reading that does not end when the book ends. And she was beyond ... and beyond as well as Johnny did.

So, I had the happy idea of inviting the "Ro" DL forum to write this post and of course I could not expect less. Even "wiping" was so great that I suggested we made in two parts.

Today we present the first part that talks about the book and in two days we will publish the second part (a must) about Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.
The timing is appropriate considering that the film was launched recently directed by Brazilian Walter Salles.

Ro:
In order to understand why this book was enchanted Johnny Depp, I began to read without reading the epilogue (prefer to be surprised), waiting for an alluring adventure of young backpackers hitchhiking on desert roads of the United States, with reports to a naive remote epoch, where the risks and dangers of the road did not seem to exist and whose charm ended in the late 70s.

What I found was a moment effervescent, with minds not sossegavam on a journey whose path was described irreverent prose, fluid and free, as I could not imagine for the time it was produced.

With the certainty that should have read at least 30 years, I returned to the epilogue and then went to fetch information about author Jack Kerouac and his restless generation, the Beat Generation.

The book does not exist by itself. It is a reflection of the misfit and thought-provoking writer and a generation dissatisfied with their historical and social moment.

Without entering into the merits of the practice of drug abuse, the denial of moral force or other controversial issues, one should consider the merits of the "crazy" that throughout the history of mankind make society less to ask:?

Admittedly, it is not to finish reading the last page of the book.

So tentatively, I bring a minimum of information, quotes and my impressions when reporting how and why this book also enchanted me.

The "STORY"

The beginning of the episode brings that gave meaning to prose style that followed.

The university Sal Paradise has access to the letters that the juvenile delinquent Dean Moriarty, about to leave the workhouse, wrote to his friend Chad King asking that teach about Nietzsche and all about the wonderful intellectual knowledge he possessed. His naively and spontaneously caught his attention. The meeting between him and his friends, bored and unhappy with the direction that a post-war was taking, it seemed an encounter lit. Not much needed to decide to hit the road in search of the freedom to live without limits quai longed for. Thereafter, the story takes place exactly as it was lived. Rhythm, speed, intensity, no time to think. Then, in the next second, another fact ensues, it gives another speech, uninterrupted.

The description of the people, habits, relationships, places, events and Jazz takes sometimes a frantic pace and sometimes tedious, like an endless journey, aimlessly, fueled by hallucinogens, seemingly unhurried but boiling in the desire to live without rules and limits, in the opposite direction to the conventions of society at that time, the mid-40s.

I could see the expressions, walking fast or slow, the shade, the sun, the lights, romance and rejection, and other landscape emerges, another light hits the surface. The mind, "deranged" or not, appropriates everything he sees and feels everything and boredom appears at times when Sal returns to everyday life, the common place, the urge to hit the road again.

During playback, this rhythm leads us to believe that what is is worth the journey and the flavor of the prose is breath in time with the mind. Sometimes breathless.

There was no waiting for a happy ending or sad.

There was the expectation of the moral of the story.

But to know if there is, just reading course, it will not tell you the end.

The expectation is for each of us, as well as how to understand the facts reported and the time it occurred.

BOOK

Writing about travel with his friend Neal Cassady, crossing the United States from east to west, from New Jersey, along the "Route 66", Jack Kerouac, told them exactly as they happened, formulating sentences the way in which facts succeeded without punctuation or paragraphs. Thus was born On the Road, whose writing would suffer seven years of rejection to be published in 1957 edition which added unnecessary punctuation and paragraphs, to the chagrin of the author.

The book is not autobiographical, but his story and his sources of inspiration suggests that Sal Paradise is the alter ego of Jack Kerouac's Dean Moriarty who has in the representation of his friend Neal Cassady and Carlo Marx is where the poet Allen Ginsberg and Old Bull Lee is the writer William Burroughs.

Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassady

Quote:

"... Crazy fan of Charlie Parker and other hurricanes in the formation of 40, Jack wrote his masterpiece in the rhythm of the best shot be-bop, with long paragraphs almost no punctuation, transforming them into sweaty sax solos, giving your readers the impression that touched the keys of the typewriter while the left foot acionava frantically one cymbal drum.
And it was in jazz bars that its protagonists, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, had its apotheosis as faithful entranced and blessed in a temple populated by black saints, drugged, and their celestial metals of which took pace that Sal and Dean wanted to impose their lives, crossing Route 66 in Mexico and crazy triggered by endless miles and full of hope ... "(Alexandre Carvalho dos Santos, Magazine Interlude) http://zip.net/bfhbZ

"Bob Dylan ran away from home after reading On the Road. Chrissie Hynde, the Pretenders, and Hector Babenco of Pixote, too. The Doors Jim Morrison founded. At the dawn of the 90s, the book took the young Beck to become a singer, fusing rap and beat poetry. Jakob Dylan, son of Bob, let himself be photographed next to Jack's grave in Lowell, Massachusetts, as his father had done twenty years before. In 1992, Francis Coppola (the producer), Gus Van Sant (director) and Johnny Depp (actor) became involved in filming the book never materialized - and despite the age difference, the three shared the same reverential fervor by the work. "(Eduardo Bueno, preface).

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg at the grave of Jack Kerouac in 1976

In the preface, Eduardo Bueno describes, briefly, the importance of On the Road as an influence for the arts:

"... An entire legion of writers, artists, filmmakers, playwrights and musicians, the generation that has multiplied in many, would be heavily influenced by the style and the visions of Jack Kerouac. Hard to imagine the work of Sam Shepard, Bob Dylan, Charles Bukowski, Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, Tom Wolfe, Bret Easton Ellis, Joni Mitchell, Wim Wenders, Hunter Thompson, Neal Young, of Jim Jarmush, Jack MacInerney, Beck, Bobo, Tom Waits, Gus Van Sant, Bob Wilson without On the Road. All they paid tribute to the weakness fluidic and crazy and generous Catholic mystic who saw the light on the tracks and trails of America. "

VERSIONS

ON THE ROAD, THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT.

Auctioned in 2001, sold for two million, four hundred and twenty thousand U.S. dollars, was published in 2007.

It is a roll, and the legend says, written in just three weeks in April 1951.

"A single block of text with no paragraphs, no division into parts or chapters. Exactly as designed (...) What was being offered at that auction in 2001, was not only an original work, but the mother of a myth. "

(Claudio Willer, Needle Magazine culture) http://zip.net/bxhchm

EDITED VERSION IN 1957.

In Brazil, On the Road: On the Road, in two editions:

- Brasiliense, 1984, in the translation of Eduardo Bueno and Antonio Bivar.

- Reissue by L & PM Pocket, translation of Eduardo Bueno and Lucia Brito in 2004.

In this edition, I read, I indicate the introduction and afterword. Perfect.

Claudio Willer, in his text on Needle Culture Magazine, asks:

"On the Road Which one should read? The original or the one published in 1957? "

He adds:

The 1957 edition

"... Made history: his reading is enjoyment, and also participation, political gesture to prove its actuality. You keep believing that literature is adventure, and that, so conceived, can change lives and transform the world. "

The original On the Road II

"... First to be written and the last to be released, enables a kind of voyeuristic pleasure. It's like looking behind the scenes. The inner life, the protagonists stripped. The story, fictionalized least ... "

"Reading more recommendable, more exciting, so it's not one or the other of the two versions, but what is between them. Compare them, and so see more on what designates Penny Vlagopoulos well as the most monumental of cartography on human desire. "

Tip: Read the sound of Charlie Parker and bon voyage!

-------- X --------

And there?

Fancy a ride?

Sources:
1 - What is Beat? - Raw and biographies. By Márcio Ribeiro.
2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
3 - Alexandre Carvalho dos Santos
4 - Cultural Notebook
5 - Needle Magazine culture. Claudio Willer

Do not miss the second part of this post in two days.

•