Synopsis

On the Road swings to the rhythms of 1950's underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat.

Now recognized as a modern classic, its American Dream is nearer that of Walt Whitman than Scott Fitzgerald, and it goes racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and autobiographical passion.

. . . “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”

Inspired by Jack Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience.

Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naivete and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz.

On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.

Film Tie-In Edition, given with The Telegraph newspaper.

Details

• Format : Slightly Smaller 2nd Hand Paperback
• Condition : Very Good
• Category : Fiction - Classics
• Published : 1957 (This Edition 2012 - Penguin / The Telegraph)
• ISBN : 9780141392721 . . . "Not for Resale"
• SKU : B001618
• PPC : LL250gm
• RRP : £6.99
• Quantity Available : 1 only.

External Reviews

"Everyone is feeling the call of the wild, aching to hit the road and head out west. That, in a sentence, is what On the Road is all about: the quest for ultimate fulfilment before the sun goes down. Kerouac called this magic moment “It” . . ." - The Guardian.

"On The Road, the most famous of Jack Kerouac's works, is not only the soul of the Beat movement and literature, but one of the most important novels of the century. Like nearly all of Kerouac's writing, On The Road is thinly fictionalised autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac's real life friends, lovers and fellow travellers. Narrated by Sal Paradise, one of Kerouac's alter-egos, this cross-country bohemian odyssey not only influenced writing in the years since its 1957 publication but penetrated into the deepest levels of American thought and culture." - Acton Lane.

"'A paean to what Kerouac described as "the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being"" - The Sunday Times.

The Author

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (March 12, 1922 - October 21, 1969), often known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist of French Canadian ancestry, who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.