Ugh, ugh, ugh. I read part of On the Road for a book club once. I think I read quite a bit of it, but I just couldn't stand it. It was being at a party where everybody was stoned and full of themselves, and then there were these women and children that he and friends used and left behind.

There were about 15 people that showed up for this group fairly regularly and then there were always people who came because they wanted to talk about whatever the book of the month was. One woman that showed up to talk about On the Road was just an icon of the typical woman that men like these use. It was sad, sad, sad. Because, you know, it was alright for guys to treat you like crap if they were cool guys like this.

AMDG

I've tried to read that; well, I could even say I *have* read it, but my brain just sort of slid off the words, so it doesn't feel as though I've read it.

Did you ever read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?

AMDG

Well, the reason I asked is because Kesey was really influenced by Kerouac, was he not? Of course, it's been 40 years since I read that book, but that may have been the first place I read Kerouac's name. And that's one example of why I said that the Kerouac and his crowd laid the groundwork for the 60s and 70s.

AMDG

Right, Francesca, but it's about Ken Kesey (and his followers).

I don't know about Kerouac as a literary influence on Kesey--from what I remember of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and what I know about Kerouac's work, I'd say not much. But culturally--I'd say it was even more than influence, that they were both part of the same phenomenon or movement. You could consider "Dean Moriarty" aka Neil Cassidy's role as a major figure in Electric Kool-Aid as defining the continuity. You may not remember since it's been so long since you read the book, but NC had a key role in Kesey's group.

It's been a long time since I've read EKAT, too, but in it Kesey may talk of their travels as a sort of next phase of OTR.

Yes, the revolution still had a long way to go in 1959 (I think that's when this show was broadcast). I used to be puzzled in reading novels set before...I don't know, 1960, 1950, somewhere in there...when reference was made to "men in shirtsleeves". What else would they be in? The coats and ties that were the normal everyday wear for everyone who didn't do hard manual labor, I suppose.

I'm also struck by how much of the western literary/intellectual tradition still stuck to the Beats, and to people like Steve Allen. I don't think you would hear a Letterman or Leno speak as articulately as Allen does here.

"The coats and ties that were the normal everyday wear for everyone who didn't do hard manual labor, I suppose."

I just saw the movie of The Thirty-Nine Steps the other day. It includes a curmudgeonly old farmer who comes in from the fields in a shirt and tie, and puts on his jacket to sit down at the supper table.

Speaking of The 39 Steps, does anyone else read John Buchan?

AMDG

Wow, those films are fascinating, Paul. Thanks.

I've wanted to read John Buchan for a long time, Janet, but never have.

The local library is full of books on tape and I no longer have a tape player in my car. Though it appears there is no John Buchan anyway.

It occurs to me that in that Steve Allen appearance Kerouac might actually have looked like a bohemian because he wasn't wearing a tie.

I saw the movie of The 39 Steps many years and liked it, and I have a friend who has always recommended the book, so I finally decided last year to take a look at it. It started out really well, but then I got to page 6 and found this: "The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him."

Then a few sentences later: "But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake."

Sort of took the wind out of my sails re finishing the book. I know that lots of writers before World War II had some not nice stuff about Jews in their books, but, wow, I don’t recall any quite this, well, visceral.

Goodness, I'd completely forgotten those passages, Marianne. How can I have?!

Janet, my 15 year old daughter just put in an ILL request for Mr Standfast.

Wonderful movies, Paul. In the Manchester street scene (1901) almost all the males, including the carters and the boys, are wearing ties. One of the comments is "look how classy people used to dress back then
by comparison, everyone looks homeless now-a-days."

(If I were to write a thriller in which the man that died in the first chapter was convinced that Mossad was behind 9/11, and it turned out in the course of the book that the main enemy the protagonist-narrator was obliged to flee and try to foil was an Iranian spy ring, just how anti-semitic would the book as a whole be?)

I read a lot of Buchan when I first came to Scotland in the mid 1990s. I especially enjoyed the historical ones (Midwinter is said to be the best, if you haven't read it), but I liked the Hannay / spy ones too. I don't remember either the anti-Semitic remarks to which Marianne refers or the plot which Paul describes! Better reread them before I leave Scotland.

When I came to Scotland, I tried fairly hard to get into the culture. I read a lot of Buchan, but when I tried to read Walter Scott, I utterly failed.

Francesca, Instead of reading them before you come here, you should bring them because they are hard to find here and I could come get them. :-) I've never read the historical ones. I'll have to see if I can find them around here someplace.

Marianne, I don't remember those quotes, but there is an attitude towards people of other races--well, and other nationalities, too--in the books, but the only way to avoid that is to not read much from that period--or Shakespeare--or Chaucer.

Anne-Marie, I'm not familiar with that book. I wonder if it's one of the Hannay books that I can't find.

AMDG

Do not , for one repulse , give up the purpose that you resolved to effect .Do you understand?