Written in the early 1950s and published in 1957, On the Road is often considered a defining work of the postwar "Beat Generation" that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences. The novel is purportedly a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. Its rambling style is said to be intended to reflect the improvisational fluidity of jazz.
Read more than 60 years after the events it portrays, the book has an other worldly quality as its characters crisscross a pre-interstate America by hitchhiking, hopping freight trains and scraping pennies together for bus tickets. The characters are suspended in time between the depression-era hobos (who were on the road because they had no choice) and the hippies of the sixties and beyond (who possessed, I would argue, a more articulated critique of the "establishment"). Kerouac and his friends are above all hedonists, high on the seeming freedom of the open road and a life lived without commitments. Despite all their frantic bonhomie, a sense of melancholy and loneliness pervades their travels. The world is not a particularly friendly or forgiving place, and neither sex nor drugs nor jazz (no rock-and-roll yet) ultimately satisfies their search for meaning.
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