Dope, liquor, girls, jazz, and fast cars, in that order, are Dean's ladder to nirvana, and so much time is spent on them that it is hard to keep track of any larger pattern behind all the scuttling about.

Kerouac makes considerable play with his disorderly childhood, his hitch in the reform school, and his rootlessness, but his activities seem less a search for stability than a determined pursuit of euphoria. At odd moments they devote a little thought to finding Dean's father, a confirmed drunk who is presumably bumming around somewhere west of the Mississippi.ĭean is the more important character. They race back and forth from New York to San Francisco, they charge from one party to another, they tour jazz joints, and Dean complicates the pattern by continually getting married. bill and writing a book between drinks, and his younger friend, Dean Moriarty late of reform school. JACK KEROUAC'S second novel, On the Road (Viking, $3.95), concerns the adventures of the narrator, Sal Paradise, a war veteran who is studying on the G.I. And still she was correct in recognizing a novel that, however repetitive its narrative, still burns, burns, burns, like fabulous yellow roman candles. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl was still on trial for obscenity. While Kerouac skyrocketed to fame soon after On The Road’s publication, Adams was writing at a time when the Beat Generation was still new and Kerouac the man, not the author, had yet to become its avatar.

The next month, The Atlantic’s Phoebe-Lou Adams was tasked with reviewing it.Īdams notes that “Dope, liquor, girls, jazz, and fast cars, in that order, are Dean’s Ladder to Nirvana” as she describes a “most readable” if “repetitive” novel that only “disappoints because it constantly promises a conclusion of real importance… and cannot deliver.” She praises the “part severe simplicity, part hep-cap jargon, part baroque fireworks” of Kerouac’s breakneck style. On September 5th, 1957, Viking Press released Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. They must make a judgment before the public’s reactions, the movies, and-in this case-the author’s beatification. Book reviewers, at the time of writing, can only review the novel in front of them.

Jack kerouac on the road 1957