On the Road

Written in 1951
Published in 1957
The hip-pocket bible of the beat generation.*
A recognized American classic but also a highly contested text
Alternative definition of Americanness
Mobility as a form of resistance
Influence of Jazz Music and Black Culture

*Peter Tamony, Beat Generation: Beat: Beatniks (Western Folklore Vol. 28, No. 4, Oct., 1969) p. 274
 Kerouacs Everlasting America

America at this moment stands at the summit of the world.

Winston Churchill, 1945

Early post war years defined by prosperity and social conservatism

On the Road expressed the rise of a post-WWII counter-culture
The Beat Generation
Concerns about conformity and materialism in the post war era
Affluence as a corruption of the American identity
 Mobility as a form of resistance

A repeated pattern of excitement with the prospect of a new city, followed by a

period of exploration and then dejection and sadness followed by continued
travel*
The road as an expression of frustration with and resistance to 'the American
Dream'
Mobility as part of a search for Kerouacs reconstructed America
A nostalgic vision of America, full of references to the heroes of the American past

*Cresswell, Tim, Mobility as Resistance: A Geographical Reading of Kerouac's 'On the Road (Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers. New Series, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1993), p. 254
 Visions of Neal

On the Road as an exploration of the essence of "Americanness"

Those who were "mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous
of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a
commonplace thing* as the real Americans that epitomize all the
positive aspects of exceptionalism
Dean Moriarty as the embodiment of the American spirit
Neal Cassady as the personification of Kerouacs vision of freedom

*Jack Kerouac, On the Road (London: Penguin Books, 1972) p 11

 Jazz America
According to Ann Douglas, Jack Kerouac's work represents the most
extensive experimentation in language and literary form undertaken by
an American writer of his generation*
A transitional work in Kerouacs career
Jazz as the novels central structural metaphor - 'Spontaneous Bop
Prosody'
Beat Generations attraction to jazz due to its ideological associations
with African American culture

*Douglas, Ann. On the Road Again. Rev. of The Portable Jack Kerouac and Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters,
1940-1956. (New York Times Book Review 9 Apr. 1995.) p. 2
 Bibliography
Abbott, Philip. The state of nature on Route 66: Jack Kerouac's On the Road and
the social contract tradition (Philosophy and Literature, Volume 37, Number 1,
April 2013)
Ann Douglas, On the Road Again. Rev. of The Portable Jack Kerouac and Jack
Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940-1956 (New York Times Book Review 9 Apr. 1995)
Douglas Malcolm, Jazz America": Jazz and African American Culture in Jack
Kerouac's On the Road (Contemporary Literature Vol. 40, No. 1, Spring, 1999)
James T. Jones, Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend: The Mythic Form of an
Autobiographical Fiction (Carbondale and Edwardsville: SIU Press, 1999)
Peter Tamony, Beat Generation: Beat: Beatniks (Western Folklore Vol. 28, No. 4,
Oct., 1969)
Tim Cresswell, Mobility as Resistance: A Geographical Reading of Kerouac's 'On
the Road (Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 18, No. 2)