On the Road

On the Road is Jack Kerouac’s poster-novel for the Beat Generation, a group of writers in the 1950s and 60s who began as a counter-culture artistic movement. The Beat Generation is known for its artistic freedom, drug use, alcohol abuse, and sex. On the Road features characters that mirror Kerouac and his friends in the Beat movement – Allen Ginsberg as Carlo Marx, Neal Cassady as the infamous Dean Moriarty, and William Burroughs as Old Bull Lee, among many others. The book is a whirlwind tour through beat American nights of jazz and drinking, in a novel that, written in a frenzy of a few weeks, defied classic plot and narrative traditions. After Kerouac's writing extravaganza in 1951, the book took the form of a long scroll without chapter or paragraph breaks. (The book was recently published in 2007 in this original form by Viking to celebrate its 50th anniversary.) Needless to say, editors had their way with it before the first publication in 1957.