On the Road

In its time Jack Kerouac's masterpiece was the bible of the Beat Generation, the essential prose accompaniment to Allen Ginsberg's Howl. While it stunned the public and literary establishment when it was published in 1957, it is now recognized as an American classic. With On the Road, Kerouac discovered his voice and his true subject—the search for a place as an outsider in America.

On the Road swings to the rhythms of fifties underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns, and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveler and mystic, the living epitome of Beat.

"Life is great, and few can put the zest and wonder and sadness and humor of it on paper more interestingly than Kerouac." —Luther Nichols, San Francisco Examiner

"Just as, more than any other novel of the Twenties, The Sun Also Rises came to be regarded as the testament of the Lost Generation, so it seems certain that On the Road will come to be known as that of the Beat Generation." —Gilbert Millstein, The New York Times

@Didn'tTypeOnTP For TWITTERATURE of On the Road by Jack Kerouac, please see On the Road by Jack Kerouac. From "Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less"

Short-listed for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003

“"Life is great, and few can put the zest and wonder and sadness and humor of it on paper more interestingly than Kerouac." - San Francisco Chronicle”

"An authentic work of art . . . 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." --Gilbert Millstein, The New York Times

"On the Road has the kind of drive that blasts through to a large public. . . . What makes the novel really important, what gives it that drive is a genuine new, engaging and exciting prose style. . . . What keeps the book going is the power and beauty of the writing." --Kenneth Rexroth, San Francisco Chronicle "A highly euphoric and intensely readable story about a group of wandering young hedonists who cross the country in endless search of kicks." --Leonard Feather, Downbeat

"On the Road is perhaps the supreme American romance . . . a mystical and poignant reminder of lost youth, and those sublime years when everyone feels immortal." --The Guardian, "The 100 Best Novels"

"[On the Road] changed my life like it changed everyone else's . . . It speeds by like a freight train . . . You grabbed ahold of the train, hopped on and went along with him, hanging on for dear life." --Bob Dylan

"Kerouac turned up the temperature in American letters, and it's never gone down since." --John Updike

"[On the Road] showed me that you could do things that weren't sypposed to be done. Suddenly, I realized I wasn't the only one to think I was a nut because I had strange thoughts. Finally, here was somebody telling the truth." --David Bowie

"If [Kerouac] hadn't written On the Road, The Doors would have never existed . . . that sense of freedom, spirituality, and intellectuality--that's what I wanted in my own work." --Ray Manzarek

"My teenage years were soaked in Kerouac. I wanted to go on a road trip with Neal Cassady. The expanse of the American West became implanted in my imagination." --Colum McCann

"On the Road, The Dharma Bums . . . That was my starting point, the Beats putting poetry--spoken word--and jazz together." --Van Morrison

Jack Kerouac's (1922-1969) "On the Road" was published in 1957, six years after its completion. It went on to become a bestseller and is considered the quintessential statement of the 1950's literary movement known as the Beat Generation. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac did stints at Columbia University, in the Navy and in the Merchant Marine before meeting Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady, who would influence the rest of his life and his writing. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida at the age of forty-seven.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.