On the Road

The Original Scroll

Hardcover, 416 pages

English language

Published Aug. 16, 2007 by Viking Adult.

ISBN:
9780670063550

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5 stars (1 review)

On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise. The idea for On the Road, Kerouac's second novel, was formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was published by Viking Press in 1957. The New York Times hailed the book's appearance …

23 editions

Subjects

  • Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969
  • Fiction
  • Literature - Classics / Criticism
  • Literature: Classics
  • Classics
  • Fiction / Literary
  • Autobiographical fiction
  • Beat generation
  • Page proofs (Printing)