Reviews for Jack Kerouac's American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey of "On the Road"

The average rating for Jack Kerouac's American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey of "On the Road" based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-01-25 00:00:00 Brad Adtea I really wanted to like this book, if for no other reason than because I love "On The Road". In fact, "On The Road" may be my favorite novel, one which thrills and inspires me more with each read. In Jack Kerouac's American Journey, Kerouac scholar Paul Maher chronologically recreates the events that inspired "On The Road", which seems like a win win, especially if you are interested in the man behind the novel and how he relates to his thinly disguised alter-ego Sal Paradise in "On The Road". The problem with this book is it reads like a Wikipedia page. In that I mean that it is more or less a regurgitation of information from the diaries and memoirs of Kerouac, Ginsberg and others that has been pulled all together in one place for easy access, but without any style, flair or even much in the way of cohesion besides the fact that it is organized in roughly chronological order. It's not so much that Maher shows himself a bad scholar through this novel, just a bad writer. The material is interesting enough that I was able to slog though (if for no other reason, then for the love of Kerouac), and did give interesting insight from time to time on how much "On The Road" changed (beginning as a fictional story and becoming an ambitious experiment in autobiographical writing), but at points I found myself asking whether anyone had even edited the book. However, if you are as big of a fan of "On The Road" like me, you'll probably read Jack Kerouac's American Journey anyway, and you probably should.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-01-12 00:00:00 Debra Gulick Similar to "Jack Kerouac Matters," this book offered nothing new to the experienced and knowledgable Kerouac scholar. However, if you're new to Kerouac, this might be of great interest.