On the Road, Text and Criticism

Sal Paradise, a young writer, travels from New York to Los Angeles with his friend Dean Moriarty, and an assorted hodgepodge of women, bohemians, and others. Rich descriptions of characters, places and music show Kerouac's exuberance and his love of the freedom of the road. Revolutionary not only in subject matter but also in style, this book (written in 1950) launched the Beat movement and crowned Jack Kerouac its king. Autobiographical, as are most of Kerouac's books, ON THE ROAD involves characters who were Kerouac's real-life friends and Beat cohorts: Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Allan Ginsberg, William Burroughs (here appearing, as in Burroughs's own fiction, as the character Bill Lee). Publishing legend has it that Kerouac typed the manuscript frenziedly on large rolls of Teletype paper, not pausing for revision, and deposited these rolls on the desk of his startled editor.