Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"

Our investigation of the Beat Generation this term will begin with, perhaps, the movement's defining text — a novel that, more than a half-century after its initial publication continues to captivate and inspire new generations of readers — Jack Kerouac's On the Road. 

Kerouac's second novel, On the Road was released in 1957, capturing the dissatisfaction he and his friends felt towards society's prevailing norms (think Ozzie and Harriet, Pleasantville, suburban homes with a full regiment of state-of-the-art appliances surrounded by white picket fences), along with a desire for greater social, sexual and cultural freedom, a heady wanderlust, curiosity towards drugs, jazz, minority culture . . . it packs quite a bit of revolutionary fervor into 300 or so pages. 

Written through the perspective of Sal Paradise, the book traces four cross-country trips Kerouac took, alone and with friends, between 1947 and 1950, spending time in places including Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Mexico City, along with his homebase of New York City, and in it, you'll encounter many of the other writers we'll be reading this term, including Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx) and William S. Burroughs (Ol Bull Lee) (fear not, Gregory Corso is a central character in The Subterraneans).  As you perhaps can already tell, On the Road is highly autobiographical in nature — in essence, thinly-veiled nonfiction with some alterations (which we'll discuss in class) — and this open, honest style is a hallmark of the Beats and their literature.

Because we won't be having class on Thursday, I'm frontloading the reading so you can get a fair amount of it out of the way before our second and third classes on the book.  Here's our schedule:

• Tues., January 11th: Parts 1 and 2
• Thurs., January 13th: Part 3
• Tues., January 18th: Parts 4 and 5

On Tuesday, we'll also sign up presenters for the rest of the quarter, but our most important goal will be to have two presenters for the rest of On the Road, so if you enjoy the reading so far, consider signing up for one of those slots (or one covering the other two books by Kerouac we'll be reading).

If you don't have an edition of On the Road that includes Ann Charters' introductory essay, here's a link to a copy of it in PDF format.  And here are some supplemental links if you're interested in more background information on Kerouac and On the Road:

• Gilbert Millstein's career-making review of On the Road from The New York Times' September 5, 1957 edition
• Luc Sante's New York Times feature on On the Road's 50th Anniversary, plus a slideshow of covers from foreign editions 
• Another gallery of On the Road covers from its 51 years in print
• A Kerouac character key, revealing the pseudonyms used to conceal the identities of his friends and peers in many of his books