Jack Kerouac's American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey of On the Road - Paul Maher

You've Missed The Point

Having read Paul Maher's "Jack Kerouac's American Journey" and just about everything else written by and about Kerouac, I'm puzzled as to why other reviewers have chosen to nitpick a truly groundbreaking novel. Maher does not give us the same soap opera schlock about what kind of beer Jack drank or what he was watching on television just before he died. On the contrary, Maher narrows the focus to concentrate on the evolution of "On The Road" from the perspective of Jack's literary mind. We gain insights into Kerouac's fondness not just for Thomas Wolfe, but also Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, and Joseph Conrad's dark, dream-like novel, "Heart of Darkness." Maher adds details that inspire reading far more than most of the many biographies written on Jack.

If someone is really interested in Kerouac as an artist and how the creative forces grew within him, than Maher's book is a must. If you want more half-baked stories about a man who has already been misrepresented and misunderstood, go elsewhere.

An essential acquisition for high school to public libraries featuring Kerouac's works.

JACK KEROUAC'S AMERICAN JOURNEY: THE REAL-LIFE ODYSSEY OF 'ON THE ROAD' is a 'must' for any library including Kerouac's fiction. It celebrates the 50th anniversary of ON THE ROAD and provides a biography of the book and its popularity, considering Kerouac's objectives, style, and influence and following his travels throughout the U.S. between 1947 and 1951. In providing a survey of the real people and experiences which helped shape ON THE ROAD, this offers many important keys to understanding and will prove an essential acquisition for high school to public libraries featuring Kerouac's works.

jack kerouac's american journey

Maher traces the victories and vicissitudes of Kerouac's peripatetic life during the late l940's through 1951, charting along the way the evolution of Kerouac's aesthetic sensibility, highlighting, in particular, the contribution of Neal Cassady whose fragmented writings inspired and informed Kerouac to a greater degree than the work of other fellow travelers. Cassady's free-flowing and playful prose style was a revelation to Kerouac and moved him toward development of the theory of "spontaneous prose."
Maher concludes with the year l951 when 29 year old Kerouac wrote the "scroll version" of ON THE ROAD. The book written in three weeks, but, as noted, at least four previous versions of the book were written by Kerouac and the themes incorporated in the published work germinated for years in Kerouac's mind. "Live like a hobo and work like a dog," Kerouac advised would-be writers, and for much of his life lived by his adage. The l957 ON THE ROAD was as much draft of an older work as spontaneous composition. Kerouac had been rehearsing, you might say, for years, previous to the three week writing session.
The story of the writing of ON THE ROAD is a familiar one, told in Tim Hunt's KEROUAC'S CROOKED ROAD and elsewhere, but Maher adds to the tale through judicious use of Kerouac's journals and letters. A usage that moves readers closer to the inner workings of Kerouac's mind as he plotted his way. with dogged perseverance, to the creation of an american classic.
Though the prose is stilted and occasionally marred by awkward phrasing, Maher knows his subject and creates a compelling narrative, weaving strands of Kerouac's life and work to the greater social and cultural history of the post-WWII era.
Maher's KEROUAC, The Definitive Biography (2004) was a solid contribution to the body of Kerouac studies. The latest book is decent synthesis of a vital period in the life of a writer finally being given due recognition.
Wayne F. Burke, Montpelier, VT

A Bit of a Disappointment

Paul Maher Jr.'s previous book on Jack Kerouac, while hardly the "definitive" biography that its book jacket proclaimed, was still an impressive and scholarly accomplishment. It was the first biography of Kerouac I read, and while I've since read several more, Maher's book holds up pretty well.

So what the hell happened with this new book?

"Jack Kerouac's American Journey," published in time to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the publication of "On the Road," is as sloppy as his previous book was precise. It is atrociously written and filled with poor proofreading and errors of fact. In addition, unless you're already familiar with Kerouac's life, a lot of the book isn't going to make sense since there's a lot that Maher just doesn't bother to explain. And given that many of his citations are in MLA format, one has to wonder whether or not this was an academic paper or some kind of thesis plumped up to meet a deadline and capitalize on the novel's anniversary.

Let me give just some of the errors of fact in the book (I didn't start noting them until I was more than halfway through the text):

p. 111: Kerouac never studied at the New School with "dramatist Eugene O'Neill" for the very simple reason that O'Neill never taught at the New School or anywhere else. The professor in question was O'Neill's son, the gifted and troubled classicist Eugene O'Neill Jr., who would take his own life only two years later. To be fair, Gerald Nicosia in his Kerouac biography "Memory Babe" makes the same mistake. I don't know of any Kerouac biographer who gets this right.

p. 139: Charles Chaplin was not "arrested with actress Joan Barry." He was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury. Barry was not charged with anything.

p. 155 "to resume classes at New School" Unless it's written in Russian, this is ungrammatical. It should be The New School, and the full title of the school should be used: The New School for Social Research (it's now referred to as New School University).

p. 200: "at his mother's new apartment in Richmond Hill, Long Island." This is a common mistake. Richmond Hill is not on Long Island, it's in the borough of Queens. It's like saying that someone lives in Mexico City, North America.

p. 208: "the moody broodings of Miles Davis" Unless this is a conscious nod to James Joyce's "Ulysses" (in which, on page 9 of the Random House edition, Buck Mulligan implores Stephen Dedalus to "Give up the moody brooding"), this is just bad writing.

p. 263: "The little fissure split into a widened gap." Writing doesn't get much worse than this.

p. 272: "Dean's portrayal of the troubled Nick Ray" This has been commented on by others. James Dean played Jim Stark in "Rebel Without a Cause." Nicholas Ray was the director of the film.

p. 273: This has been noted as well. Ian, not Alan, Fleming wrote the James Bond novel "From Russia With Love."

p. 277: I've always heard that Orville Prescott, not Charles Poore, was the regular book reviewer for the Times at that time, and that he was on vacation at the time of On the Road's publication, thus leaving Gilbert Milstein to write his now-infamous review.

Given all these mistakes and poor writing, there's really no reason for anyone to read this book. Try one of the many Kerouac biographies (even Maher's own) and just look at the chapters for the years 1947-1951 and you'll do a lot better than this.

Beat Generation Maps America

What map did Kerouac use to plan On the Road? See how the Beat Generation viewed America. Read Maher's book to learn the real story.