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We Know Time
People usually turn their minds off on buses and planes with magazines or headphones or sleeping pills. Kerouac makes the road something mythic. On the Road is the antithesis of shutting out life just because you're waiting to get somewhere. As a hitchhiker Sal sees the physical and cultural landscapes of the mammoth American nation shifting before him, forever building up the romance of his destination the closer he gets to it. He travels through the states whooping in the night, not just to Frisco and Denver and LA but through the expanses of desert, rolling fields of wheat, tiny towns, glowing hills, and wild characters that lay in between. The gradual progression gives Kerouac a grasp of the geography and people of different regions in America, and he has the ability to draw out their souls with language. The trips and cities don’t always live up to their mystique, but his mind is on fire anyway, and he even instills disillusionment with sad romantic beauty; “The cruiser was pulled up below and the cops were questioning an old man with gray hair. Sobbings came from within. I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.” Kerouac is intensely alive on the road, whether he's depressed or ecstatic. He takes it all for what it’s worth and trusts that somewhere along the way he's going to find the pearl.
Sals interest seemed to stay within the car
This was my initial reaction to On the Road too, where Sals enjoyment of the road trip made me crave the excitement of hopping in a car and driving to a few friends cottages (the only similar experience i could relate to where we don't need many possessions, plans or money). But then, as I continued to read I found that Sal was not necessarily taking in the sights but taking in the feeling of being on the road. I found that much of the imagery became repetitive and conveyed a sense of sitting back and perhaps even closing your eyes and simply enjoying the wind in your hair and the company in the car. He seemed to be more infatuated with the vastness of the country and the stories that he could recall which occurred in each spot, than with the specific details of each state he passed through.