Review: On the Road

On the Road is the classic tale from 1957 where Jack Kerouac and his buddies from The Beat Generation travel in a haze of weed and caffeine across America. It’s considered to be one of the definitions of Beat literature and remembered as a big influence on writers and artists.

In a wider perspective, this is the tale of a lost generation. The free-spirited characters are hazily drifting across America without any clear goal or purpose, an indication of the state of the youth after the war in the fifties. Even though it’s a work of fiction, the characters are strongly based upon friends and people that Kerouac met during his travels across the country.

The original manuscript was supposedly typed on a paper scroll, 36 meter long. In 2007 the book was republished in a 50-year-anniversary edition, containing the uncensored scroll text. It contains the true names of his travel companions, such as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady.

City Lights bookshop.

I once visited the City Lights bookshop at 261 Columbus Ave (next to aptly named Jack Kerouac Alley) in San Francisco, which has been a hub for Beat literature for half a decade, and walked past the building at 29 Russel St where Jack stayed with Neal and Carolyn Cassady while writing on the book.

Definitely not a book for all audiences, but it’s recommended reading if you’re ever going on the road and care one bit about literature.

Endless dirt road through Nevada.