The Postal Order Reading Group discuss On the Road

The Big Read has proved a treasure trove for our reading groups, sparking off some new reading ideas but also allowing us to indulge in revisiting old favourites.  When the group decided to read On the Road by Jack Kerouac there was mixed reaction – those who had been young in the 50s and 60s were keen to relive the experience and vied with each other to relate their own experiences of that period.  The younger members of the group, however were a little nonplussed.  – they regarded the title almost as a historical novel!
With this in mind we expected that the discussion after reading the book would be a lively mix of nostalgia and cynicism about the American Dream as portrayed in the story and were a little surprised at how it turned out.  Susan, one of the original enthusiasts, was so disappointed that she wished she hadn’t re-read the book.  She had enjoyed it so much as a teenager and now was seriously doubting her judgement!  Pat, another enthusiast remembered that it had been so fashionable in his youth to say that you’d read it that he’d carried the book around with him for weeks as a sign of being ‘cool’.  Again, the revisitation proved an anticlimax, though Pat felt that Kerouac so accurately caught the mood of the ‘beat generation’ that almost half a century later, it’s a bit unreasonable to expect the same emotional charge.
 The reaction of the younger readers however, was more favourable – they looked at the book almost as a snapshot of a period they had no first hand experience of.  Although they remained detached and didn’t relate to the ‘epiphany’ that the older group members had experienced on first reading the book,  they enjoyed it as a cult novel of ‘counter-culture’ in the style of ‘Trainspotting’.  Carol agreed that it is a book which encapsulates the aimlessness and broader horizons of the post-war generation, and when looked at in that way it can be seen as an interesting social comment.
The discussion meandered around the social aspects of the book without any passionate arguments and the final mood of the group was that some books speak to a generation at a certain moment  but this doesn’t necessarily mean it will stand the test of time.  Sorry Kerouac fans!!