On the Road (Penguin 20th Century Classics) [Paperback]

Jack Kerouac (Author), Ann Charters (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0140185216 | ISBN-13: 978-0140185218 | Publication Date: January 1, 1991

The novel that defined the Beat generation, this exuberant tale of two men traversing America is as fresh and fantastic as ever.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On the Road is truly an influential work. Overnight, it propelled Jack Kerouac from unknown status to "king of the beats" and then helped awaken a nation of youth who shook America out of the 1950s and ushered in the excitement of the 1960s. The novel continues to inspire and has picked up a new generation of followers in the 1980s and 1990s. On the Road follows Sal Paradise as he traverses the American continent in search of new people, ideas, and adventures. But it's the way Sal and his friends--primarily Dean Moriarty--look at the world with a mixture of sad-eyed naivete and wild-eyed abandon that causes the rumbling in the soul of so many who read it. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Fans of Kerouac get the whole beautiful, groovy deal with this new recording of the radically hip novel that many consider the heart of the Beat movement. Poetic, open and raw, Kerouac's prose lays out a cross-country adventure as experienced by Sal Paradise, an autobiographical character. A writer holed up in a room at his aunt's house, Paradise gets inspired by Dean Moriarty (a character based on Kerouac's friend Neal Cassady) to hit the road and see America. From the moment he gets on the seven train out of New York City, he takes the reader through the highs and lows of hitchhiking, bonding with fellow explorers and opting for beer before food. First published in 1957, Kerouac's perennially hot story continues to express the restless energy and desire for freedom that makes people rush out to see the world. The tale is only improved by Dillon's well-paced, articulate reading as he voices the flow of images and graveled reality of Paradise's search for the edge.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (January 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140185216
• ISBN-13: 978-0140185218
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (676 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 190 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The outlaw spirit seething underneath 1950's conformity, February 2, 2002

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: On the Road (Mass Market Paperback)

Published in 1957, this autobiographical novel by Jack Kerouac captured the spirit that was seething underneath 1950s conformity. Myth has it that he typed it non-stop for three weeks, using one long continuous sheet of paper. I understand it went through several drafts after that but it still holds the immediacy of that marathon typing session, the staccato rhythm of the words creating improvised rhythm across the page with little, if any punctuation.

The narrator, Sal Paradise, is on an epic quest, one that takes him back and forth across the country with Dean Moriarity who is based on the real-life Neal Cassady. Dean, the reform school escapee who specializes in stealing cars, is Sal's mentor. And it is the automobile that is their chariot, which keeps them constantly in motion. Dean's madness is glorified, as is his ability to do whatever he pleases. There are a lot of drugs in the book, but liquor seems to be their drug of choice. They leave the heroin for a character loosely based on the real William Burroughs. Women drift in and out of the story, usually as one of Dean's lovers who he treats terribly. Dean treats everyone terribly though, abandoning Sal on several occasions, once while Sal was suffering from dysentery while they were in Mexico. Sal, however, always forgives Dean, seeing him as a god-like hero, no matter what he does.

There's more to the book than the story though. The book is a trip, in every sense of the word. With the simple force of his writing, Kerouac took me on an adventure. With him I crisscrossed America, hitchhiking, walking, taking buses. With him I sat in a car driven by Dean Moriarity, speeding for hours at 110 miles an hour and not even thinking about a seatbelt. I met the pathetic women who loved Dean and didn't feel a bit sorry for them. I felt the quest in Dean's heart for his hobo father who he constantly searches for. And, I experienced the jazz, felt the heat and smelled the sweat in the many small bars, felt my head reel from the whisky and the sound all around me, stayed awake all night listening to sounds and being alone with the music in a room full of people. Yes, I felt I was there with the travelers, enjoying vicariously the thrills and the chills and knowing this would be my only entry into that world. Jack Kerouac eventually became an alcoholic and died an early death, but I'm personally grateful for this book he left behind and the experience of reading it. Highly recommended.

68 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Take Detour, Uneven Road Ahead., January 17, 2008

By 

Vincent D. Pisano "Stillborn Messiah" (CT, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Road (Mass Market Paperback)

On the Road, Jack Kerouac's epic of road travel and search for meaning in the late 1940s, was written in three weeks time, typed on a long scroll, which was really several pieces of paper taped together. Kerouac's writing has a stream of conscious, spastic nature, although it went through many years of revisions before being published. The story fictionally recounts true events in the writer's life, particularly those with Neal Cassidy (Dean Moriarty in the book), whom Sal, the Kerouac character, seems to have had an infatuated crush on. From New York to California and Mexico Sal drives, or rather rides, and comes across various characters and cities. The novel helped to launch the Beat movement and has influenced countless writers, artists, and readers alike, and has been deemed one of the best novels of 20th-century American literature. Significantly, it made America a literary subject.

I wanted to like this book. I really, really did. I was prepared to be blown away and taken on a literary adventure of meaning and wonder, excitement and energy. I read, and waited, to no avail. I read some more, but it soon became apparent that this would not be the book for me. Despite this, I grudgingly soldiered on and completed it a few days later than I had anticipated to (I usually breeze through fiction without struggle), as I continuously put it back on my shelf only to talk myself into trying again. I'm glad I did, but found that the book's legend is far more interesting than the actually story.

Split into four sections, each consecutive one involving a different road trip with more details and a shorter time-span, I found myself also becoming consecutively more involved as the book went on. The first section I found, unfortunately, tedious and little more than a listing of things he did and places he went. The following section was not as eye-rolling, and the third was tolerable. The fourth was actually interesting. There was throughout, of course, the occasional poetic and insightful passage, but they were few and far between and not really worth the effort to find. The most unfortunate flaw of the novel is that it is actually quite uninteresting. It would have made an intriguing (and bearable) novella, but its length feels frustratingly unjustified.

Furthermore, and this is no fault of Kerouac, the book is hardly what popular culture has touted it to be. The text is not rebellious, but actually quite conservative. It is not forward-looking, but nostalgic. The roads that the men travel upon are by the 1950s (the book was published in 1957) of little significance as Eisenhower was quickly building up interstate freeways. Kerouac's memoirs are really a sort of nostalgia for a disappearing era. And the characters, really, are hardly rebels. Instead they drift from place to place seeking excitement, only to find the same dull existence in each setting. In the second half of the book Sal begins to grow tired of the road, and of Dean, as he sees more and more of the same. Also, Sal often feels content to be a spectator rather than a participant, watching the antics of others from a safe distance. Truly, the men are misfits. In an age when men were expected to be unemotional, solitary bread-winners, Sal is thoughtful and sensitive, indeed, tenderness between men (not sexual, as that was omitted from the original draft) is an important aspect of the novel, and he is continuously asking his aunt (mother, in life), whom he still lives with, to send him money. In this way they were unique, disenfranchised maybe, but they were not rebelling against anything. Mostly they get drunk and try to get laid in a familiar fraternity style. The characters are lonely and insecure, not hipsters or nonconformists. Their journey is about a search for stability, not spontaneity. These are not criticisms of the novel, but merely observations, and are actually the elements that make story vaguely readable.

For all these reasons and more it is an important piece of Americana, and it is an interesting commentary for its time, about its time. However, great literature it is not. In fact, I can't bring myself to recommend that people spend their time going through Kerouac's thoughts, which usually amount to things being "mad," or his journal-like passages of events that tend to feel more like the notes he took about an account to be later revised into a yet-to-be-finished version. For another road story of the same period, published around the same time, take a detour and check out Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which is phenomenal literature, rather than a literary phenomenon. Some may say it is a victim of its own hype, which nothing can ever live up to, but I've read some classics where that hype has been more than appropriate. Kerouac, the man and his book, is one that people tend to have very strong feelings about, either positive or negative, and perhaps he does speak to the heart of some readers. This reader, however, was unimpressed and unmoved. On the Road's importance today is more in what it symbolizes, rather than what it is.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Beat Counterpart of Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises', January 22, 2000

By 

"jdubach" - See all my reviews

This review is from: On the Road (Penguin 20th Century Classics) (Paperback)

On The Road is probably one of the greatest works of the 20th Century that has gone unrecognized by society and the world as a whole. Kerouac's style is masterful, precise, and blazingly descriptive. It's a virtual miracle that he isn't more popular than he is. There's a certain romance to On The Road. A lone figure, Sal Paradise, starts out from New England to head for the West Coast. He has no idea what will happen along the way, and God only knows what he'll do once he gets there! His counterpart, Dean Moriarty is the person most of us would like to be, but can't. He's a figure built on irresponsibility, charming ignorance, and the mentality that will get him out of any bad situation. Paradise goes all over this land with his comrade in an attempt to find himself, and realizes that all he had to do was look in his own city for solace. All he would ever need was within his grasp the whole time. This book is full of descriptive detail and a streak of knowledge that only a true figure who lived his life "on the road" would know. I recommend this book for anyone who has read Ernest Hemingway's work especially. Just as Hemingway was the epitome of the Lost Generation, so Kerouac is the epitome of the Beat Generation. I also strongly recommend this book for anyone who feels they need to travel, or expand their horizons in order to find themselves. They'll be met with an astonishing truth after reading this novel.