On the Road - Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was born to French-Canadian parents in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. He studied at Columbia University where he met Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs who would become fellow leading lights of the beat generation. Kerouac dropped out in his second year then joined the merchant navy, before turning to writing as a profession. From 1947, he became increasingly attracted to the whisky-drinking  hobo lifestyle and began his wandering across America and Mexico, often visiting various other beat writers. Those voyages across the North American landscape were relayed in his various roman à clef writings, friends’ faces only thinly veiled as protagonists. Kerouac’s alcoholism led to cirrhosis and his death in 1969.

In the postwar United States, a generation of middle-class youth became increasingly reluctant to follow the societal pathways of their parents based on materialistic goals. Instead, they adopted a meandering, spontaneous form of existence in their quest to find true meaning in life. Some of them became known as “beats”: a collective of poets and writers who sought kicks, spiritual refuge, and excess in alcohol, drugs, and sex; they also delighted in jazz.

On the Road details a series of journeys that Kerouac took between 1947 and 1950. In the book they are narrated by Sal Paradise (identified with Kerouac himself) who is often accompanied on his travels by Dean Moriarty (the writer Neal Cassady). A number of other beat generation writers also appear in the book, disguised by name only, such as Allen Ginsberg (“Carlo Marx”) and William S. Burroughs (“Old Bull Lee”).

Quotes:
“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”