I know I'm going to get slews of misguided "unhelpful" votes, but the truth must be heard. Contrary to some comments below, I did go into this movie with a open mind. I heard all about how energetic it was, and I knew that I would love the music. I wasn't expecting "Citizen Kane"-- just some fun. After about ten minutes, I would have walked out of the theater if I hadn't been with a friend. This movie is a dated mess. What must have seemed like refreshing "hey, we're a brand new generation" cheekiness then, now just comes across as annoying brattiness. Sort of a G-rated "Clockwork Orange". Plus, I don't expect the Beatles to be actors, but couldn't they have surrounded themselves with some talent instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel for guys who mug at the camera like they're in a grade school play? They should release a version with all the "acting" edited out and just show the music sequences, which are wonderful (and far too infrequent-- or maybe they just seemed that way).

This book reminds me of a typical Saturday Night Live movie: one good joke and 85 minutes of filler. The story of Carville's history with the Clintons and why he defended them is interesting and well-written. Unfortunately, once told, Carville needed to write over a hundred more pages in order to have a book-length volume. At almost every juncture where he could have written something insightful about loyalty (like his marriage to a very partisan Republican and his love for his racist grandmother), he rarely fails to back away, throw his hands in the air with a "gosh, ain't that weird?" sort of attitude, and leave it at that. If you're a hard-core partisan Democrat, you might like it just because it hits all the right spots by beating up on nearly every prominent Republican in sight. But that's not exactly tough, and other books like "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot" do the same thing, but with humor and more than ten minutes of research.

When I first found this book, I was so glad, because as far as I know, it's the only grammar-intensive self-study Japanese textbook on the market. Every other textbook on learning Japanese is either for total beginners with lots of "fun" tourist-oriented sidebars, or is designed for classroom use. Here, finally, I thought, was a book that simply laid out the basic rules of Japanese grammar in a compact and concise manner. Perfect.

Now having worked my way through much of the book, however, my enthusiasm has waned. I still love the concept, and it HAS been helpful, but it's got a lot of mistakes. From mistranslating the Japanese particle "o" as "wo" through the entire book, to incorrect answer keys, to numerous typos. They also use the annoying "double" method for writing long vowels, as in "paati" and "shoojiki", instead of the more logical and accurate Hepburn system with lines over the vowels to show that they're long. All the errors make me wonder sometimes if they got the grammar wrong anywhere as well. So I still recommend the book, but just, um, nervously.

It seems that I have a very different interpretation of this book than others do. I suppose Huxley meant for it to be a condemnation of the World State utopia. But I don't see it that way. I see the novel much more as a tragedy of the human spirit.

Huxley paints a picture of a world where almost everyone is happy and content. Why is this so bad? What no one ever really seems able to explain is why a life of misery and hardship is truly better than life in the World State. WE may not find satisfaction in it, but maybe that's just a product of our own masochistic minds. Why condemn those that do find satisfaction in it? Why must we drag them into our pit? I see in these reviews reminders of the way that the natural humans in the novel shun John. The World State is "different" and must therefore be attacked- never mind that almost all of its inhabitants are perfectly fine with their lives. That doesn't matter! They MUST be made to see that pain is good! What?

For me, the center of this novel is the tragedy of John- a man unable to live anywhere. A man torn to shreds by his own soul, and then turned into an amusement by society. THAT, to me, is the heart of the book. That sometimes there is no right and wrong- there is only the unbearable fact that some people simply aren't made for the times or culture that they're born into. What do they do? How do they survive? Unfortunately, in John, we see the fate of so many great and original thinkers.

Okay, so the Beats were jerks. I know I wouldn`t have gotten along with them. I find their parasitic lifestyles disgusting. They are spiritual godfathers to all the droves of pasty-faced teens lounging and panhandling in places like Boulder and Seattle. I lead a rootless life myself and I don`t enjoy having to deal with the negative image of travellers that people like Kerouac have created.

But that doesn`t matter.

Because whatever I think of Kerouac personally, he created a novel of such energy and wild honesty that I always emerge from it with a freshness of spirit and passion. I have read no one, NO ONE, who better communicates the pain and joy of being a modern American nomad. Reading "On the Road" is like injecting Kerouac`s mind straight into my veins. And what an intense, confused, powerful, repugnant, wonderful mind it was. May he (finally) rest in peace.