On the Road by Jack Kerouac is the exhilarating novel that defined the Beat Generation & is a 2012 major motion picture starring Kristen Stewart Kirsten Dunst & Sam Riley beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range' What's your road man?
- holyboy road madman road rainbow road guppy road any road It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow' Sal Paradise young & innocent joins the slightly crazed Dean Moriarty on a breathless exuberant ride back & forth across the United States Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink sex drugs & jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom a test of the limits of the American Dream A brilliant blend of fiction & autobiography Jack Kerouac's exhilarating novel defined the new ' Beat' generation & became the bible of the counter culture' On the Road sold a trillion Levis & a million espresso machines & also sent countless kids on the road The alienation the restlessness the dissatisfaction were already there waiting when Kerouac pointed out the road' William Burroughs' Pop writing at its best It changed the way I saw the world making me yearn for fresh experience' Hanif Kureishi Independent on Sunday Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell Massachusetts in 1922 Educated by Jesuit brothers in Lowell he decided to become a writer at age seventeen & developed his own writing style which he called 'spontaneous prose' He used this technique to record the life of the American 'traveler' & the experiences of the Beat Generation most memorably in On the Road & also in The Subterraneans & The Dharma Bums His other works include Big Sur Desolation Angels Lonesome Traveler Visions of Gerard Tristessa & a book of poetry called Mexico City Blues Jack Kerouac died in 1969