Men’s group - road trip to North Beach
Mark K March 10th, 2007
Last night the met at Vesuvio for a night of discussion “On the Road”, Kerouac and the idea of taking to the road. Our first “road trip” meeting was a huge success - it was hard not to stay on the topic sitting in a place surrounded by pictures of Kerouak, Ginsberg, Cassidy and the other Beats and having drinks in the same place where Jack himself had hoisted a few. We even drew the attention of some fellow customers who thought that it was really cool that some old guys would get together to discuss books (or maybe they just said that because they wanted our leftover pizza). The consensus was that our film choice, “The Sure Thing” was okay, but was dated and had a limited audience - teenagers (and maybe not even today’s teenagers). We were all pleasantly surprised that “On the Road” was a pretty straight-forward narrative - it didn’t read like the stream-of-consciousness rant that many of us had anticipated. However, it did have a huge outpouring of energy and careless zest for life that would be understandably appealing to people living in the 50’s - the age of the gray flannel suit, McCarthyism, and the cold war. Any other comments on your reaction to the book or, for those who attended, the evening at Vesuvio?
