An unfocused Peter Pan expresses his confused discontent with the purposelessness of his life by drifting back and forth across the country in the company of similarly addle-pated losers. His bone-deep narcissism allows him to remain convinced (despite all evidence to the contrary) that a succession of starvation-wage menial jobs, casual petty theft, abusive sexual relationships and escapist substance abuse is noble, heroic and illustrative of the inner workings of where it is so totally real, man, I mean like totally and on the upswing REAL.
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Sick burn on one of the most self-indulgent members of the American non-fiction canon.
ReplyDeleteI'm listening to it in the car. This is probably a good thing, because if I were reading a physical copy of the book, I'd have thrown it across the room in disgust by now.
ReplyDeleteThe sad thing is that this spoke so strongly to a friend of mine that he structured his life to emulate it. Road trips, temps jobs, spurning the trappings of the bourgeois middle class, living out of a VW bus... neo-hippy affectations galore. At 23 this was bohemian and adventuresome and endlessly entertaining. At 42, much less so.
Wow, man. You, like, totally grooved the meaning of the thing. Far out.
ReplyDeleteI read and enjoyed Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Acid Kool-aid Test" and thought I should read - and would enjoy - the Kerouac writings. Alas, I never finished it. Thanks for ringing the gong!
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