I read "On The Road" and think I enjoyed it... but I read it when I was in my early 20s and may have just assumed I needed to enjoy it.
I bought "Desolation Angels" around the same time but never read it.

Maybe it's reading Belloc's "The Path to Rome"... but I feel an impulse to read "Desolation Angels" (though "On the Road" would be more fitting... with the caveat that one has a destination in mind while the other appears to not).

Both men being Catholic. I was stunned when I heard that Kerouac was a Catholic and one who defended his faith at that.

It seems to have meant something to him. Or, could he be like the edgy director Lars Von Trier who claims to have been Catholic merely to offend the sensibilities of people (funny way to try to offend).


Anyone like Kerouac's works?

Never read them.

His Catholicity seemed to be sincere. And he liked William F. Buckley.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/ ... -catholic/

https://spectator.org/remembering-jack- ... -catholic/

Back in my early 20's I thought I was a Kerouac fan. I liked On the Road, of course, but I think Dharma Bums was more interesting. At the time, I sort of thought I was a Buddhist or something, so, you know. It would never have occurred to me that there was anything remotely Catholic about Kerouac.

I did what you are considering. I read OtR as a callow yout. Then, much later, even recently.

I expected to be a bit disappointed ... common when one reexamines the interests and passion of one's late teens and early '20's. I was more than a little. I found Kerouac to be mindlessly narcissistic the second time round. Selfish. What surprised me was having the impression, in the earlier read, that he was very interested in the wide world and its inhabitants ... and, in the later read, that he was interested mainly in himself.

But, that was the Beat Generation. And, IME, the '60's.