On September 5, 1957, Viking published Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. Few books have had as profound an impact on American culture. Pulsating with the rhythms of late-1940s/1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that "set them free." This edition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the original publication of an American classic. Based on Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose four cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naivete and wild abandon, and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.
eMusic Review 1
09.18.08
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
2008 | Label: Penguin Audio
The book that launched a thousand road trips
The book that launched a thousand trips, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road has received the sort of endless criticism, some quite negative, reserved for immensely popular books. Detractors have spent more than 50 years trying to prove that it’s not that great. In the meantime, generations of teenagers and twentysomethings have begged to differ. There are plenty of people willing to debate the relationship, or lack thereof, between influence and greatness, but very few would attempt a denial of On the Road‘s enormous impact on both literature and culture. Its ongoing success isn’t surprising: half a century after its initial publication in 1957, Kerouac’s semiautobiographical novel continues to capture the restlessness characteristic of American youth. Sure, the scenery has changed a bit — many now consider hitchhiking riskier than the drug use or promiscuity that once made this book shocking. However, the urge to translate the figurative journey inward into a literal journey outward is an impulse with which most Americans remain intimately familiar — it was this sort of wanderlust that mapped and continues to map our country as we know it. If there’s a better book to listen to on a road trip, we haven’t heard it.
