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A View from the Couch

OTR has received some negative reviews lately, so I thought I would try to explain my rating.

This novel deserves to lounge around in a five star hotel rather than languish in a lone star saloon.

Disclaimer

Please forgive my review. It is early morning and I have just woken up with a sore head, an empty bed and a full bladder.

Confesssion

Let me begin with a confession that dearly wants to become an assertion.

I probably read this book before most of you were born.

So there!

Wouldn't you love to say that!

If only I had the courage of my convictions.

Instead, I have only convictions, and they are many and varied.

However, I am sure that by the end of my (this) sentence, I shall be released.

Elevated to the Bar

I read OTR in my teens, which were spread all over the end of the 60's and the beginning of the 70's.

My life was dominated by Scouting for Boys.

I mean the book, not the activity.

My mantra was "be prepared", although at the time I didn't realise that this actually meant "be prepared for war".

After reading OTR, my new mantra was "be inebriated".

Mind you, I had no idea what alcohol tasted like, but it sounded good.

Gone were two boys in a tent and three men in a boat.

OTR was about trying to get four beats in a bar, no matter how far you'd travelled that day.

Typing or Writing

Forget whether it was just typing rather than writing.

That was just Truman Capote trying to dot one of Dorothy Parker's eyes.

This is like focusing on the mince instead of the sausage.

All Drums and Symbols

You have to appreciate what OTR symbolised for people like me.

It was "On the Road", not "In the House" or "In the Burbs".

It was about dynamism, not passivity.

It wasn't about a stream of consciousness, it was about a river of activity.

It was about "white light, white heat", not "white picket fences".

Savouring the Sausage

OK, your impressions are probably more recent than mine.

Mine are memories that have been influenced by years of indulgence. (I do maintain that alcohol kills the unhealthy brain cells first, so it is actually purifying your brain.)

I simply ask that you overlook the mince and savour the sausage.

Beyond Ephemerality

I would like to make one last parting metaphor.

I have misappropriated it from the musician, Dave Graney.

He talks about "feeling ephemeral, but looking eternal".

Dave comes from the Church of the Latter Day Hipsters.

He is way cooler than me, he even looks great in leather pants, in a spivvy kinda way.

However, I think the point he was making (if not, then the point I am making) is that most of life is ephemeral. It just happens and it's gone forever.

However, in Dave's case, the way he looks, the way he feels, he turns it into something eternal.

It's his art, his music, our pleasure, our memories (at least until we die).

Footnotes on Cool

Creativity and style are our last chance attempt to defy ephemerality and mortality and become eternal.

Yes, all that stuff between the bookends of OTR might be typing, it might be preserving ephemerality that wasn't worthy or deserving.

However, the point is the attempt to be your own personal version of cool.

Heck, no way am I cool like the Beats or James Dean or Marlon Brando or Jack Nicholson or Clint Eastwood or Keith Richards or Camille Paglia.

However, I am trying to live life beyond the ephemeral.

That's what OTR means to me.

If it doesn't mean that to you, hey, that's alright. I'm OK, you're OK. It's cool.

Original posted: March 01, 2011