[deleted] OP t1_iycm0bh wrote on November 30, 2022 at 12:07 PM

Reply to comment by ISayISayISay in As a non-American, reading On The Road, felt like a snapshot of postwar youthful Boomer mentality. by [deleted]

Well, those generalisations work both ways, and my view stands as it's down to each individual and how they look at Sal and his friend, heroes or villains? Is the life he lead a great expression of freedom or incredibly selfish, destructive and entitled?

Great movements were initiated by the boomer generation, no doubt, (I mean not stuff like the civil rights act, that was introduced to the house and pushed forward by the generation before boomers) but you can't pretend all boomers were part of those movements, and what happened to those movements, why has so little changed? In either case there is no evidence Sal and his pals could give two hoots about social progression.

I think my "generalisation" comes from why the book was so popular and why such a self serving character as Sal was lauded as a hero searching for the American dream, when all he did was take whatever he wanted, from whoever he wanted until they were of no use or interest to him.

ISayISayISay t1_iycqu8y wrote on November 30, 2022 at 12:57 PM

Well, Kerouac was writing about the "beat" section of his generation, which was, despite it's fame, always a minority even in its time. It's not for nothing that it never became dominant. Most people - then or now - did/do not want to live like that, even if they get caught up in the idea of absolute freedom to do as you want when you want for the duration of the trip... it's a seductive idea, but when push comes to shove it's no way to live, and most people do recognise that. So I don't think it is a "snapshot of postwar youthful Boomer mentality", just that of a small section within it, even if their dream did make a lot of (other) people smile for a while at the dream of absolute freedom.

As you say, this was a post-war generation, and they were revelling in a new-found freedom, not just from war, but from the strict social conventions that had dominated pretty much all societies since forever. So, yeah, a section of them took it to extremes and had a whale of a time. For a time. And others looked in with a variety of reactions. But I would caution against over-generalisations.