The Reader Travels

I’ve written a few times about Jack Kerouc’s On the Road, but I have to admit, I didn’t love it. I thought he had a big huge case of the smug. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautifully written, and I did enjoy the adventure. I also appreciated his love for jazz and seeing the different people and places along the road. I might have enjoyed it better through someone else’s eyes, though.

At some point in his journey, he finds himself picking cotton among the poor migrant farm workers in California. He brushed alongside their plight for long enough to decide that he’d rather write home for money than live like they did.

A friend of mine was talking this weekend about a study she heard about, which indicated that people with more choices generally had more regrets. Comparing Kerouac with his migrant farm worker friends, he had the choice to write home for bus fare and get himself out of that situation. His friends didn’t have such a luxury, didn’t have a choice. What was there to regret, then? He could regret not staying with that fine woman he shacked up with. He could regret not taking her with him. I suppose each choice leaves a possibility for regret. But really there’s no point in it.

Pondering the alternate paths ones life might have taken is great for writing fiction, but worrying over them is a poor way to live life. Kerouac didn’t seem to have any regrets, but he did somehow romanticize these lives less fortunate, less cursed with choices.  He was under the delusion that poverty equates to goodness and wealth to wickedness.

As he roams through Mexico, he sees it as the land of Jesus and sweet young Mary’s by the roadside. “Wake up and see the shepherds, wake up and see the golden world that Jesus came from, with your own eyes you can tell.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 10:49 am and is filed under road tripping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.