On the Road
Encyclopedia
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac
, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press
in 1957
. It is a largely autobiographical
work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation
that was inspired by jazz
, poetry
, and drug
experiences. While many of the names and details of Kerouac's experiences are changed for the novel, hundreds of references in On the Road
have real-world counterparts.
When the book was originally released, The New York Times
hailed it as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat," and whose principal avatar he is." In 1998, the Modern Library
ranked On the Road 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was chosen by Time
magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
, Kerouac in 1950 outlined the "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" and decided to tell the story of his years on the road with Cassady as if writing a letter to a friend in a form that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz.
The first draft of what was to become the published novel was written in three weeks in April 1951 while Kerouac lived with Joan Haverty, his second wife, at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan, New York. The manuscript was typed on what he called "the scroll": a continuous, one hundred and twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper sheets that he cut to size and taped together. The roll was typed single-spaced, without margins or paragraph breaks. In the following years, Kerouac continued to revise this manuscript, deleting some sections (including some sexual depictions deemed pornographic in the 1950s) and adding smaller literary passages. Kerouac authored a number of inserts intended for On the Road between 1951 and 1952, before eventually omitting them from the manuscript and using them to form the basis of another work, Visions of Cody
. On the Road was championed within Viking Press
by Malcolm Cowley
and was published by Viking in 1957, based on revisions of the 1951 manuscript. Besides differences in formatting, the published novel was shorter than the original scroll manuscript and used pseudonyms for all of the major characters.
Viking Press released a slightly edited version of the original manuscript on 16 August 2007 titled On the Road: The Original Scroll corresponding with the 50th anniversary of original publication. This version has been transcribed and edited by English academic and novelist, Dr. Howard Cunnell. As well as containing material that was excised from the original draft due to its explicit nature, the scroll version also uses the real names of the protagonists, so Dean Moriarty becomes Neal Cassady
and Carlo Marx becomes Allen Ginsberg
etc.
In 2007, Gabriel Anctil, a journalist of the Montreal's daily Le Devoir
discovered, in Kerouac's personal archives in New York, almost 200 pages of his writings entirely in Quebec French
, with colloquialisms. The collection included ten manuscript pages of an unfinished version of On the Road, written on January 19, 1951. The date of the writings makes Kerouac one of the earliest known authors to use colloquial Quebec French in literature.
and marks a specific era in jazz history, “somewhere between its Charlie Parker
Ornithology
period and another period that began with Miles Davis
.” The novel is largely autobiographical, Sal being the alter ego of the author, and Dean standing for Neal Cassady
.
Invited by Remi Boncoeur from San Francisco, Sal sets off in July 1947 with fifty dollars in his pocket. A false start leads him to Bear Mountain and Newburgh, and after his return to New York, he spends half his money taking the bus to Chicago. Mostly hitchhiking, he moves further west to Denver, meeting interesting characters along the way, such as Mississippi Gene and Montana Slim. In Denver, Sal hooks up with Carlo Marx, Dean, and their friends. There are parties — among them an excursion to the ghost town of Central City. Eventually Sal leaves by bus and gets to San Francisco, where he meets Remi Boncoeur and his girlfriend Lee Ann. Remi arranges for Sal to take a job as a night watchman
at a boarding camp for merchant sailors waiting for their ship. Not holding this job for long, Sal hits the road again. “Oh, where is the girl I love?” he wonders. Soon, he meets the “cutest little Mexican girl” on the bus to Los Angeles. They stay together, travelling back to Bakersfield, then to Sabinal, “her hometown”, where her family works in the fields. He meets Terry's brother Ricky, who teaches him the true meaning of "mañana". Working in the cotton fields, Sal realizes that he is not made for this type of work. Leaving Terry behind, he takes the bus back to New York, and walks the final stretch from Times Square to Paterson, just missing Dean, who had come to see him, by two days.
and other jazz musicians. The stay ends on a sour note: "what I accomplished by coming to Frisco I don’t know,” and Sal departs taking the bus back to New York.
, Gilbert Millstein wrote, "its publication is a historic occasion in so far as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in an age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlatives of fashion," and praised it as "a major novel."
David Dempsey wrote that Kerouac delivered, "great, raw slices of America that give his book a descriptive excitement unmatched since the days of Thomas Wolfe
."
Other reviewers were less impressed. Phoebe Lou Adams in Atlantic Monthly wrote that it "disappoints because it constantly promises a revelation or a conclusion of real importance and general applicability, and cannot deliver any such conclusion because Dean is more convincing as an eccentric than as a representative of any segment of humanity.
Kerouac scholar Matt Theado points to the book's multi-layered reputation: "Kerouac's most famous novel comes with many associations that work to inform and mislead the reader before the cover is opened. The book is both a story and a cultural event." David Ulin says in Book Forum that "even the most frantic of Kerouac’s writings were really the sagas of a solitary seeker: poor, sad Jack, adrift in a world without mercy when he’d rather be 'safe in Heaven dead.'" "Kerouac was this deep, lonely, melancholy man," said Hilary Holladay at the University of Massachusetts
. "And if you read the book closely, you see that sense of loss and sorrow swelling on every page." John Leland
, author of Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), says "We're no longer shocked by the sex and drugs. The slang is passé and at times corny. Some of the racial sentimentality is appalling" but adds "the tale of passionate friendship and the search for revelation are timeless. These are as elusive and precious in our time as in Sal's, and will be when our grandchildren celebrate the book's hundredth anniversary."
Kerouac later commented, On the Road "was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him. I found him in the sky, in Market Street San Francisco (those 2 visions), and Dean (Neal) had God sweating out of his forehead all the way. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OUT FOR THE HOLY MAN: HE MUST SWEAT FOR GOD. And once he has found Him, the Godhood of God is forever Established and really must not be spoken about."
, Van Morrison
, Jim Morrison
, Hunter S. Thompson
and many more. "It changed my life like it changed everyone else's," Dylan would say many years later. Tom Waits
, too, acknowledged its influence, hymning Jack and Neal in a song, and calling the Beats "father figures." At least two great American photographers were influenced by Kerouac: Robert Frank
, who became his close friend — Kerouac wrote the introduction to Franks' book, The Americans
— and Stephen Shore
, who set out on an American road trip in the 1970s with Kerouac's book as a guide. It would be hard to imagine Hunter S. Thompson's road novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, had On the Road not laid down the template; likewise, films such as Easy Rider
, Paris, Texas
, even Thelma and Louise
.
In his book "Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors", Ray Manzarek
(keyboard player of The Doors
) wrote "I suppose if Jack Kerouac had never written On the Road, The Doors would never have existed."
American pop singer Katy Perry
has cited the book as the inspiration behind her song "Firework".
(Indianapolis Colts
football team owner), for 2.43 million US dollars. It is available for public viewing, with the first 30 feet (9 m) unrolled. Between 2004 and 2005, the scroll was displayed in a number of museums and libraries in the US, Ireland and the UK.
wrote a screenplay for producer Francis Ford Coppola
, who bought the film rights for $95,000 in 1980. The Brazilian director Walter Salles
is now heading the project. After seeing Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries
, Coppola decided on Salles and the production is underway. In preparation for the film, Salles traveled the United States, tracing Kerouac's journey and filming a documentary on the search for On the Road. Jose Rivera
adapted the book into a screenplay. Coppola's American Zoetrope
is producing the film, in association with MK2
, Film4
in the U.K. and Videofilmes in Brazil. Sam Riley
starred as Kerouac's alter ego Sal Paradise. Garrett Hedlund
was cast as Dean Moriarty. Kristen Stewart
was cast as Mary Lou. Kirsten Dunst
will be playing Camille. Filming started on August 2, 2010. Filming took place in New Orleans, Montreal
, Mexico
and Argentina
with a $25 million budget.
, among others.
Rapper Outasight
refers in multiple songs to the novel.
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press
Viking Press
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
in 1957
1957 in literature
The year 1957 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Lawrence Durrell publishes the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet. The final of the four volumes will be published in 1960....
. It is a largely autobiographical
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
that was inspired by jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, and drug
Recreational drug use
Recreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...
experiences. While many of the names and details of Kerouac's experiences are changed for the novel, hundreds of references in On the Road
References in On the Road
On the Road is a novel written by Jack Kerouac , during his early adulthood in the late 1940s, and published by Viking Press in 1957. The events in the novel are almost entirely drawn from Kerouac's life. His journals and notes were filled with detailed accounts of his travels across North America,...
have real-world counterparts.
When the book was originally released, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
hailed it as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat," and whose principal avatar he is." In 1998, the Modern Library
Modern Library
The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
ranked On the Road 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was chosen by Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
Origins
Kerouac often promoted the story about how in April 1951 he wrote the novel in three weeks, typing continuously onto a 120-foot roll of teletype paper. Although the story is true per se, the book was in fact the result of a long and arduous creative process. Kerouac carried small notebooks, in which much of the text was written as the eventful span of road trips unfurled. He started working on the first of several versions of the novel as early as 1948, based on experiences during his first long road trip in 1947. However, he remained dissatisfied with the novel. Inspired by a thousand-word rambling letter from his friend Neal CassadyNeal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....
, Kerouac in 1950 outlined the "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" and decided to tell the story of his years on the road with Cassady as if writing a letter to a friend in a form that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz.
The first draft of what was to become the published novel was written in three weeks in April 1951 while Kerouac lived with Joan Haverty, his second wife, at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan, New York. The manuscript was typed on what he called "the scroll": a continuous, one hundred and twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper sheets that he cut to size and taped together. The roll was typed single-spaced, without margins or paragraph breaks. In the following years, Kerouac continued to revise this manuscript, deleting some sections (including some sexual depictions deemed pornographic in the 1950s) and adding smaller literary passages. Kerouac authored a number of inserts intended for On the Road between 1951 and 1952, before eventually omitting them from the manuscript and using them to form the basis of another work, Visions of Cody
Visions of Cody
Visions of Cody is an experimental novel by Jack Kerouac. It was written in 1951-1952, and though not published in its entirety until 1973, it had by then achieved an underground reputation...
. On the Road was championed within Viking Press
Viking Press
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
by Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
and was published by Viking in 1957, based on revisions of the 1951 manuscript. Besides differences in formatting, the published novel was shorter than the original scroll manuscript and used pseudonyms for all of the major characters.
Viking Press released a slightly edited version of the original manuscript on 16 August 2007 titled On the Road: The Original Scroll corresponding with the 50th anniversary of original publication. This version has been transcribed and edited by English academic and novelist, Dr. Howard Cunnell. As well as containing material that was excised from the original draft due to its explicit nature, the scroll version also uses the real names of the protagonists, so Dean Moriarty becomes Neal Cassady
Neal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....
and Carlo Marx becomes Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
etc.
In 2007, Gabriel Anctil, a journalist of the Montreal's daily Le Devoir
Le Devoir
Le Devoir is a French-language newspaper published in Montreal and distributed in Quebec and the rest of Canada. It was founded by journalist, politician, and nationalist Henri Bourassa in 1910....
discovered, in Kerouac's personal archives in New York, almost 200 pages of his writings entirely in Quebec French
Quebec French
Quebec French , or Québécois French, is the predominant variety of the French language in Canada, in its formal and informal registers. Quebec French is used in everyday communication, as well as in education, the media, and government....
, with colloquialisms. The collection included ten manuscript pages of an unfinished version of On the Road, written on January 19, 1951. The date of the writings makes Kerouac one of the earliest known authors to use colloquial Quebec French in literature.
Plot summary
The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Salvatore “Sal” Paradise and his new friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his care-free attitude and sense for adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to explore all kicks, and an inspiration and catalyst for Sal’s travels. The novel contains five parts, three of them describing, each: a road trip from New York to the West Coast; one to Mexico; and the last part relating their final encounter when Dean comes to visit Sal in New York. During their trip and searches, they change and their relationship changes. The narrative takes place in the years 1947 to 1950, and is full of AmericanaAmericana
Americana refers to artifacts, or a collection of artifacts, related to the history, geography, folklore and cultural heritage of the United States. Many kinds of material fall within the definition of Americana: paintings, prints and drawings; license plates or entire vehicles, household objects,...
and marks a specific era in jazz history, “somewhere between its Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....
Ornithology
Ornithology (composition)
"Ornithology" is a jazz standard by bebop alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Benny Harris.Its title is a reference to Parker's nickname, "Bird"...
period and another period that began with Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
.” The novel is largely autobiographical, Sal being the alter ego of the author, and Dean standing for Neal Cassady
Neal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....
.
Part One
Sal has just been divorced and gotten over an illness. His life changes when he meets Dean Moriarty, who is "tremendously excited with life." As he says, “with the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road”. Dean is “a side-burned hero of the snowy West” visiting New York with Marylou, his first wife. After having been thrown out by her he visits Sal who is living with his aunt in Paterson, New Jersey, wanting to learn “how to write”. In New York Dean meets an eclectic group of people, among them Carlo Marx, the poet. Sal describes their meeting as between “the holy con-man with the shining mind [Dean], and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx." Carlo and Dean share stories about their friends and adventures around the country, and Sal gets the itch. After Dean’s departure, Sal is ready to go: ”Somewhere along the line I knew there would be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.”Invited by Remi Boncoeur from San Francisco, Sal sets off in July 1947 with fifty dollars in his pocket. A false start leads him to Bear Mountain and Newburgh, and after his return to New York, he spends half his money taking the bus to Chicago. Mostly hitchhiking, he moves further west to Denver, meeting interesting characters along the way, such as Mississippi Gene and Montana Slim. In Denver, Sal hooks up with Carlo Marx, Dean, and their friends. There are parties — among them an excursion to the ghost town of Central City. Eventually Sal leaves by bus and gets to San Francisco, where he meets Remi Boncoeur and his girlfriend Lee Ann. Remi arranges for Sal to take a job as a night watchman
Security guard
A security guard is a person who is paid to protect property, assets, or people. Security guards are usually privately and formally employed personnel...
at a boarding camp for merchant sailors waiting for their ship. Not holding this job for long, Sal hits the road again. “Oh, where is the girl I love?” he wonders. Soon, he meets the “cutest little Mexican girl” on the bus to Los Angeles. They stay together, travelling back to Bakersfield, then to Sabinal, “her hometown”, where her family works in the fields. He meets Terry's brother Ricky, who teaches him the true meaning of "mañana". Working in the cotton fields, Sal realizes that he is not made for this type of work. Leaving Terry behind, he takes the bus back to New York, and walks the final stretch from Times Square to Paterson, just missing Dean, who had come to see him, by two days.
Part Two
In December 1948 Sal is visiting relatives in Testament, Virginia, for Christmas. Dean shows up with Marylou, having left his second wife Camille and their newborn baby, Amy, in San Francisco. Dean also brings along Ed Dunkel. Sal’s Christmas plans are shattered as “now the bug was on me again, and the bug’s name was Dean Moriarty and I was off on another spurt around the country.” First they drive to New York, where they meet Carlo, and party. Dean wants Sal to make love to Marylou, but Sal declines. In Dean’s Hudson they take off from New York in January of 1949, pass through Washington, DC, where Harry Truman’s inauguration takes place, and after an interlude with police, make it to New Orleans. In Algiers they stay with the morphine-addicted Old Bull Lee (“let’s just say now, he was a teacher”) and his wife Jane. Galatea joins her husband Ed Dunkel in New Orleans while Sal, Dean, and Marylou continue their trip. Lack of gas money forces them repeatedly to look for hitchhikers who would share travel expenses. Once in San Francisco, Dean rejoins with his wife Camille. “Dean will leave you out in the cold anytime it is in the interest of him” Marylou tells Sal. Both of them stay briefly in a hotel, but soon she moves out, following a nightclub owner. Sal is alone, and on Market Street has visions of past lives, birth and rebirth. Dean finds him and invites him to stay with his family. Together, they visit nightclubs and listen to Slim GaillardSlim Gaillard
Bulee "Slim" Gaillard was an American jazz singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist, noted for his vocalese singing and word play in a language he called "Vout"...
and other jazz musicians. The stay ends on a sour note: "what I accomplished by coming to Frisco I don’t know,” and Sal departs taking the bus back to New York.
Part Three
In the spring of 1949, Sal takes a bus from New York to Denver. He is depressed and “lonesome”; none of his friends are around. Envious of the life of black people, he feels that the “white world” does not offer “enough ecstasy… life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.” After receiving some money, he leaves Denver for San Francisco to see Dean. Dean’s wife is pregnant and unhappy, and Dean has injured his thumb by hitting Marylou, who was going with other men. “The thumb became the symbol of Dean’s final development. He no longer cared about anything (as before), but now he cared about everything in principle; that is to say it was all the same to him and he belonged to the world....” Camille throws them out, and Sal invites Dean to come to New York, planning to travel further to Italy. They meet Galatea who tells Dean off: ”You have absolutely no regard for anybody but yourself and your kicks.” Sal realizes she is right, Dean is the “HOLY GOOF”, but also defends him, as “he’s got the secret that we’re all busting to find out....” After a night of jazz and drinking in Little Harlem on Folsom Street, they depart. On the way to Sacramento they meet a "fag" who propositions them. Deans tries to hustle some money out of this but is turned down. During this part of the trip Sal and Dean have ecstatic discussions having found “IT” and “TIME”. Sal exclaims "the road is life." In Denver, however, a brief argument shows the growing rift between the two, when Dean reminds Sal of his age, Sal being the older of the two. Dean steals a car, but with his record — he had already been in jail for car theft — it is too dangerous to use it for travel. Instead, they get a '47 Cadillac from the travel-bureau that needs to be brought to Chicago. Dean drives most of the way, crazy, careless, often speeding over 100 miles per hour, bringing it in in a disheveled state. By bus they move on to Detroit and spend a night on Skid Row, Dean hoping to find his hobo father. From Detroit they share a ride to New York and arrive at the aunt’s new flat in Long Island. They go on partying in New York, where Dean meets Inez and gets her pregnant, while his wife is expecting their second child.Part Four
In the spring of 1950, Sal gets the itch to travel again, while Dean is working as a parking lot attendant in Manhattan, living with his girl friend Inez. Sal notices that he has been reduced to simple pleasures, listening to baseball games, and doing card tricks. By bus Sal takes the road again passing Washington, Ashland, Cincinnati, then St. Louis, and eventually reaching Denver. There he meets Stan Shephard, and the two plan to go to Mexico City, when they learn that Dean had bought a car and is on the way to join them. In a rickety '37 Ford sedan the three set off across Texas to Laredo, where they cross the border. They are ecstatic, having left “everything behind us and entering a new and unknown phase of things.” Their money buys more (10 cents for a beer), police are laid back, cannabis is readily available, and people are curious and friendly. The landscape is magnificent. In Gregoria, they meet Victor, a local kid, who leads them to a bordello where they have their last grand party, dancing to mambo, drinking, and having fun with under-age prostitutes. In Mexico City Sal becomes ill from dysentery and is “delirious and unconscious.” Dean leaves him, and Sal later reflects that “when I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossible complexity of his life, how he had to leave me there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes.”Part Five
Dean, having obtained divorce papers in Mexico, had first returned to New York to marry Inez, only to leave her and go back to Camille. After his recovery, Sal returns to New York in the fall. He finds a girl, Laura, and plans to move with her to San Francisco. Dean arrives to pick them up, but while Sal is taking a walk, he and Laura are left together. Sal realizes that it is all over. Dean heads back to Camille and Sal denies him a final ride. All that remains for Sal is the memory: he reflects on the images of the road, and closes “… I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."Reception and comments
The book initially received mixed reviews. In his review for The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Gilbert Millstein wrote, "its publication is a historic occasion in so far as the exposure of an authentic work of art is of any great moment in an age in which the attention is fragmented and the sensibilities are blunted by the superlatives of fashion," and praised it as "a major novel."
David Dempsey wrote that Kerouac delivered, "great, raw slices of America that give his book a descriptive excitement unmatched since the days of Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
."
Other reviewers were less impressed. Phoebe Lou Adams in Atlantic Monthly wrote that it "disappoints because it constantly promises a revelation or a conclusion of real importance and general applicability, and cannot deliver any such conclusion because Dean is more convincing as an eccentric than as a representative of any segment of humanity.
Kerouac scholar Matt Theado points to the book's multi-layered reputation: "Kerouac's most famous novel comes with many associations that work to inform and mislead the reader before the cover is opened. The book is both a story and a cultural event." David Ulin says in Book Forum that "even the most frantic of Kerouac’s writings were really the sagas of a solitary seeker: poor, sad Jack, adrift in a world without mercy when he’d rather be 'safe in Heaven dead.'" "Kerouac was this deep, lonely, melancholy man," said Hilary Holladay at the University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts
This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...
. "And if you read the book closely, you see that sense of loss and sorrow swelling on every page." John Leland
John Leland (journalist)
John Leland is an author and has been a New York Times journalist since 2000. During a stint in 1994, he was editor in chief of Details magazine...
, author of Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), says "We're no longer shocked by the sex and drugs. The slang is passé and at times corny. Some of the racial sentimentality is appalling" but adds "the tale of passionate friendship and the search for revelation are timeless. These are as elusive and precious in our time as in Sal's, and will be when our grandchildren celebrate the book's hundredth anniversary."
Kerouac later commented, On the Road "was really a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found him. I found him in the sky, in Market Street San Francisco (those 2 visions), and Dean (Neal) had God sweating out of his forehead all the way. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY OUT FOR THE HOLY MAN: HE MUST SWEAT FOR GOD. And once he has found Him, the Godhood of God is forever Established and really must not be spoken about."
Influence
On the Road has been a huge influence on many poets, writers, actors and musicians, including Bob DylanBob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Van Morrison
Van Morrison
Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...
, Jim Morrison
Jim Morrison
James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...
, Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
and many more. "It changed my life like it changed everyone else's," Dylan would say many years later. Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
, too, acknowledged its influence, hymning Jack and Neal in a song, and calling the Beats "father figures." At least two great American photographers were influenced by Kerouac: Robert Frank
Robert Frank
Robert Frank , born in Zürich, Switzerland, is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 photobook titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider's view of American...
, who became his close friend — Kerouac wrote the introduction to Franks' book, The Americans
The Americans (photography)
The Americans, by Robert Frank, was a highly influential book in post-war American photography. It was first published in France in 1958, and the following year in the United States. The photographs were notable for their distanced view of both high and low strata of American society...
— and Stephen Shore
Stephen Shore
Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his deadpan images of banal scenes and objects in the United States, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography.- Life and work :...
, who set out on an American road trip in the 1970s with Kerouac's book as a guide. It would be hard to imagine Hunter S. Thompson's road novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, had On the Road not laid down the template; likewise, films such as Easy Rider
Easy Rider
Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
, Paris, Texas
Paris, Texas (film)
Paris, Texas is a 1984 drama film directed by Wim Wenders. The screenplay is by L.M. Kit Carson and playwright Sam Shepard, and the distinctive musical score was composed by Ry Cooder. The cinematography is by Robby Müller....
, even Thelma and Louise
Thelma and Louise
Thelma & Louise is a 1991 film co-produced and directed by Ridley Scott and written by Callie Khouri, the film's plot revolves around Thelma and Louise's escape from their troubled and caged lives. It stars Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise, and co-stars Harvey Keitel as a...
.
In his book "Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors", Ray Manzarek
Ray Manzarek
Raymond Daniel Manzarek, Jr., better known as Ray Manzarek , is an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, Nite City from 1977–1978 and Manzarek-Krieger since 2001.Manzarek is listed #4 on Digital Dreamdoor's "100...
(keyboard player of The Doors
The Doors
The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
) wrote "I suppose if Jack Kerouac had never written On the Road, The Doors would never have existed."
American pop singer Katy Perry
Katy Perry
Katy Perry is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Born in Santa Barbara, California, and raised by Christian pastor parents, Perry grew up listening to only gospel music and sang in her local church as a child. After earning a GED during her first year of high school, she began to pursue a...
has cited the book as the inspiration behind her song "Firework".
The scroll exhibition
The original "scroll" still exists. It was bought in 2001 by Jim IrsayJim Irsay
James Irsay is the owner and CEO of the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League.-Biography:...
(Indianapolis Colts
Indianapolis Colts
The Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis. They are currently members of the South Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League ....
football team owner), for 2.43 million US dollars. It is available for public viewing, with the first 30 feet (9 m) unrolled. Between 2004 and 2005, the scroll was displayed in a number of museums and libraries in the US, Ireland and the UK.
Film adaptation
A film adaptation of On the Road has been in the works for years. Russell BanksRussell Banks
Russell Banks is an American writer of fiction and poetry.- Biography :Russell Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts on March 28, 1940. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in upstate New York, and has been named a New York State Author. He is also...
wrote a screenplay for producer Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
, who bought the film rights for $95,000 in 1980. The Brazilian director Walter Salles
Walter Salles
Walter Moreira Salles, Jr. is a Brazilian filmmaker and film producer of international prominence.-Life and career:Salles was born in Rio de Janeiro. He is the son of Elizinha Goncalves and Walter Moreira Salles, a Brazilian banker and ambassador, and the brother of João Moreira Salles, also a...
is now heading the project. After seeing Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries
The Motorcycle Diaries (film)
At the end of the film, after his sojourn at the leper colony, Guevara confirms his nascent egalitarian, anti-authority impulses, while making a birthday toast, which is also his first political speech. In it he evokes a pan-Latin American identity that transcends both the arbitrary boundaries of...
, Coppola decided on Salles and the production is underway. In preparation for the film, Salles traveled the United States, tracing Kerouac's journey and filming a documentary on the search for On the Road. Jose Rivera
Jose Rivera
Jose Rivera may refer to:*José Antonio Primo de Rivera , Spanish politician*José Eustasio Rivera , Colombian politician and writer*José Rivera , American playwright...
adapted the book into a screenplay. Coppola's American Zoetrope
American Zoetrope
American Zoetrope is a studio founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Founded on December 12, 1969, American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV...
is producing the film, in association with MK2
MK2
MK2 can refer to:* Mark II, a second version of a product, frequently military hardware. "Mark", meaning "model" or "variant"* Mk 2 grenade, a hand grenade used by the United States military starting in World War II...
, Film4
Film4
Film4 is a free digital television channel available in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, owned and operated by Channel 4, that screens films.-Programming:...
in the U.K. and Videofilmes in Brazil. Sam Riley
Sam Riley
Sam Riley is an English actor and singer.-Early life:Riley was born in Menston in the Metropolitan District of Bradford in West Yorkshire, the son of "a textile agent and nursery-school teacher". He was educated at Uppingham School...
starred as Kerouac's alter ego Sal Paradise. Garrett Hedlund
Garrett Hedlund
Garrett John Hedlund is an American actor known for his roles in the films Friday Night Lights, Four Brothers, Eragon, Country Strong, for his role as Patroclus in the movie Troy and as Sam Flynn in the film Tron: Legacy.-Early life:Hedlund was born in Roseau, Minnesota, the son of Kristine Anne ...
was cast as Dean Moriarty. Kristen Stewart
Kristen Stewart
Kristen Jaymes Stewart is an American actress. She is best known for playing Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga. She has also starred in films including Panic Room , Zathura , In the Land of Women , The Messengers , Adventureland and The Runaways .- Early life :Stewart was born and raised in Los...
was cast as Mary Lou. Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...
will be playing Camille. Filming started on August 2, 2010. Filming took place in New Orleans, Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
with a $25 million budget.
Cultural references
In conjunction with the manuscript "scroll" tour stop at Columbia College Chicago Center for Book & Paper Arts in 2008, A+D Gallery of Columbia College presented an art exhibit called "Off the Beaten Road", curated by Julianna Cuevas and Megan Ross, "a 21st century take on the innovative ways of communication and dissemination in American life put forth by the Beats and encapsulated in Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel, 'On the Road'...through sound, installation, performance, video and fine art...Artists included Greg Stimac, Diana Guerrero-Macia, Dylan Strzynski, Third Coast International Audio Festival, and Jeff GabelJeff Gabel
Jeff Gabel, aka , is an American artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY.-Biography:Gabel was born in in Portland, OR. Having spent his childhood years in Decatur, NE, he completed a BFA at Kansas State University in 1992, and an MFA at Pratt Institute in 1995. His first solo exhibition in New...
, among others.
Rapper Outasight
Outasight
Richard Andrew, better known by his stage name Outasight, is an American singer and rapper from Yonkers, New York. Though he is considered a hip-hop artist, he draws influence from other genres such as classic rock and soul, and describes his music as "Energetic hip hop mixed with melodic soul" In...
refers in multiple songs to the novel.
Character key
| Real-life person | Character name |
|---|---|
| Jack Kerouac Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic... |
Sal Paradise Sal Paradise Salvatore “Sal” Paradise is the narrator and the protagonist in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. Sal, an Italian American youth living in New Jersey with his aunt, is an uninspired writer working on a book who follows and accompanies Dean Moriarty, a young and reckless Denver vagrant, on his... |
| Gabrielle Kerouac | Sal's Aunt |
| Alan Ansen Alan Ansen Alan Ansen was an American poet, playwright, and associate of Beat Generation writers. He was a widely-read scholar who knew many languages. Ansen grew up on Long Island and was educated at Harvard. He worked as W. H... |
Rollo Greb |
| William S. Burroughs William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th... |
Old Bull Lee |
| Joan Vollmer Joan Vollmer Joan Vollmer was the most prominent female member of the early Beat Generation circle. While a student at Barnard College she became the roommate of Edie Parker and their apartment became a gathering place for the Beats during the 1940s, where Vollmer was often at the center of marathon, all... |
Jane |
| Lucien Carr Lucien Carr Lucien Carr was a key member of the original New York City circle of the Beat Generation in the 1940s; later he worked for many years as an editor for United Press International.-Early life:... |
Damion |
| Neal Cassady Neal Cassady Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road.... |
Dean Moriarty |
| Carolyn Cassady Carolyn Cassady Carolyn Elizabeth Robinson Cassady is an American writer associated with the Beat Generation through her marriage to Neal Cassady and her friendships with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other prominent Beat figures... |
Camille |
| Hal Chase | Chad King |
| Henri Cru | Remi Boncoeur |
| Bea Franco | Terry |
| Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression... |
Carlo Marx |
| Diana Hansen | Inez |
| Alan Harrington | Hal Hingham |
| Joan Haverty | Laura |
| Luanne Henderson | Marylou |
| Al Hinkle | Ed Dunkel |
| Helen Hinkle | Galatea Dunkel |
| Jim Holmes | Tom Snark |
| John Clellon Holmes John Clellon Holmes John Clellon Holmes , born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, was an author, poet and professor, best known for his 1952 novel Go. Considered the first "Beat" novel, Go depicted events in his life with his friends Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. He was often referred to as the "quiet Beat"... |
Tom Saybrook |
| Herbert Huncke Herbert Huncke Herbert Edwin Huncke was a writer and poet, and active participant in a number of emerging cultural, social and aesthetic movements of the 20th century in America... |
Elmer Hassel |
| Frank Jeffries | Stan Shephard |
| Gene Pippin | Gene Dexter |
| Ed Stringham | Tom Saybrook |
| Allan Temko Allan Temko Allan Bernard Temko was a Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic and writer based in San Francisco.Born in New York City and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey, Temko served as a U.S... |
Roland Major |
| Bill Tomson | Roy Johnson |
| Helen Tomson | Dorothy Johnson |
| Ed Uhl | Ed Wall |
See also
- References in On the RoadReferences in On the RoadOn the Road is a novel written by Jack Kerouac , during his early adulthood in the late 1940s, and published by Viking Press in 1957. The events in the novel are almost entirely drawn from Kerouac's life. His journals and notes were filled with detailed accounts of his travels across North America,...
- Off the RoadOff the RoadOff the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg is an autobiographical book by Carolyn Cassady. Originally published in 1990 as Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg, it was republished by London's Black Spring Press, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of...
(1990 book by Carolyn Cassady) - Love Always, CarolynLove Always, CarolynLove Always, Carolyn is a 2011 English-language Swedish documentary film written and directed by Malin Korkeasalo and Maria Ramström. The film is about Carolyn Cassady's recollection of life with husband Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, and her concern that the truth about these men is being lost in...
- Jack Kerouac Reads On the RoadJack Kerouac Reads On the Road-Critical reception:Richie Unterberger, in his review for Allmusic, describes the album as "a worthy collection of Jack Kerouac's narratives and poetry", noting that it is particularly enjoyable to hear Kerouac recite his work "since his prose had much of a jazz rhythm, and since he was an engaging...
- Le Mondes 100 Books of the CenturyLe Monde's 100 Books of the CenturyThe 100 Books of the Century is a grading of the books considered as the hundred best of the 20th century, drawn up in the spring of 1999 through a poll conducted by the French retailer Fnac and the Paris newspaper Le Monde....
External links
- Definitive guide to the 600 characters in Kerouac's and related novels
- Jack Kerouac characters, Real names and their aliases, alphabetically
- The Beat Museum in San Francisco
- A gallery of On the Road book covers
- The Kerouac Companion – Guide to the Duluoz Legend – character keys and family trees
- Denver Beat Photo Tour
- Photos of the Kerouac Gas Station in Longmont, CO
- Photos, Neal Cassady Sr. Gravesite
- Photos, Jack Kerouac's Last House, St. Petersburg, FL
- Google Earth tour of sites visited in "On the Road"
- Photos of the First Edition of On the Road
- An NPR Story about the travelling manuscript
- Tracing Kerouac's tracks through North Platte, Lincoln County and Nebraska North Platte Bulletin Staff - 7/21/2007
- The beat goes on: Tracing Kerouac's tracks 50 years later: A restless spirit and 'holy' pie endure By Charles M. Sennott, Boston Globe Staff, July 15, 2007
- On the Road Book Notes from Literapedia
- On the Road: A book review
- On the Road study guide, themes, quotes, multimedia, teacher resources
- Victoria Mixon's Interviews with Carolyn Cassady
- Forty Years of Kerouac's On The Road