On The Road

"On the Road" is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in only weeks April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was written as a stream of consciousness creation—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 in 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 most important utterance" of Kerouac's generation. The novel was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

"On the Road" is a novel that makes the reader want to go out there, seize the day, and live life! Jack Kerouac, creator of the "Beat Generation" best sums up his philosophy as "everything belongs to me because I am poor". The failure of ideology and of the American Dream in the 1960s gave young dreamers who were eager to live just one way out: the road.

Kerouac presents Sal Paradise, a young and innocent writer, and Dean Moriarty, a crazy youth "tremendously excited with life" racing around America, and testing the limits of the American Dream. Their journeys consist of scenes of rural wilderness, sleepy small towns, urban jungles, endless deserts-all linked by the road, the outlet of a generation's desire and inner need to get out, break its confinement, and find freedom, liberated from any higher belief, notion, or ideology. The desperation and the lack of fulfillment made these youths feel that "the only thing to do was go", searching for their personal freedom, and finding pleasure in sex, drugs, and jazz.

It seems that the "Beat Generation" had one and only ideology, and that was life. As Sal Paradise says: "life is holy and every moment is precious", which explains why Dean" seemed to be doing everything at the same time". The fear of death subconsciously followed the gang around America, as expressed by their visions of a spirit following them across the desert of life.

Even though the gang feared that "death will overtake us before Heaven" they did all in their power to experience as much of Heaven as they could while still alive. It is for this reason that Kerouac presents the "Beat Generation" as a "holy" generation: because it was liberated from the peril of ambition, materialism and ideology, and was in a constant search for some greater truth that life would teach them. Ed Dunkel, the tall, silent, lost boy is described as "an angel of a man". Dean Moriarty, the personification of the road was a "holy con-man" with a "holy lightning" gaze. By the end of the novel, Dean achieves so high a level of "saintliness" that "he couldn't talk any more".

"On the Road" is a novel of experience; it tells tales of madness played out by all kinds of strange characters, in settings as diverse as a Virginia small-town diner, a New York jazz-joint, and a Mexican whore-house. What connects these adventures is the characters' refusal to miss out on life, and their determination to get the most out of Now.

Are we beginning to see glimpses of that Beat Generation amongst our youths here, now?