Kerouac Hits the Road

It was on this day in 1957 that Jack Kerouac’s second novel, and his masterpiece On the Road was published. Like much of his writing On the Road is a roman a clef, featuring many of his friends including Alan Ginsberg as Carlo Marx, William Burroughs as Old Bull Lee, Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty, and himself as Sal Paradise. While it had its critics, Truman Capote famously said Kerouac didn’t “write, he types,” for the most part the book was acclaimed as something amazing. Today Modern Library ranks it as one of the one hundred best English language books of the twentieth century and Time Magazine ranks it similarly for the last three quarters of that century. The Guardian ranks it among the best one hundred English language books, period.