Jack Kerouac’s book “On the Road” was a seminal book in that it inspired and energized the reader into wanting to travel and see the world. By car; by hitchhiking; by jumping on a freight train; by any which way.
Kerouac romanticized the journey.
He had an exuberant personality and was a terrific writer who wrote in ‘beat’ style — spontaneously and directly — putting you in the moment.
“On the Road” was published on September 5, 1957, and soon made Kerouac world famous. He was part of The Beat Generation — a generation of writers and poets that focused on the beat and at the same time the beaten down.
“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry” wrote Kerouac.
Enjoy the Journey
In the last 15 years, “enjoy the journey” has become a catch phrase in all walks of life. Don’t focus so much on the destination, but the journey — it’s part of the experience, even if you are stuck at an airport with your family for hours or even overnight.
In the software industry, much has been written about ‘digital transformation’ being a journey, not a destination.
Life itself is a journey; not a destination.
Kerouac Reading His Own Work
Even better than reading Kerouac is listening to Keroauc reading his own work.
Here he is on the Steve Allen show in 1958:
Kerouac On Your Brain
If you have read Kerouac — not just “On the Road” but his other work such as “Big Sur” — his writing can become embedded in your brain, and it can surface when you are watching, for example, a family in their car on the expressway. Here’s Kerouac hitch hiking on Highway 101 on the California Coast from his book “Big Sur” published in 1962:
“You can see what the Spaniards must’ve thought when they came around the bend in their magnificent sloopies and saw all that dreaming fatland beyond the seashore whitecap doormat — Like the land of gold — The old Monterey and Big Sur and Santa Cruz magic — so I confidently adjust my pack straps and start trudging down the road looking back over my shoulder to thumb.
This is the first time I’ve hitch hiked in years and I soon begin to see that things have changed in America, you cant get a ride any more (but of course especially on a strictly tourist road like this coast highway with no trucks or business) — Sleek long station wagon after wagon comes sleering by smoothly, all colors of the rainbow and pastel at that, pink, blue, white, the husband is in the driver’s seat with a long ridiculous vacationist hat with a long baseball visor making him look witless and idiot — Beside him sits wifey, the boss of America, wearing dark glasses and sneering, even if he wanted to pick me up or anybody up she wouldn’t let him — But in the two deep backseats are children, children, millions of children, all ages, they’re fighting and screaming over ice cream, they’re spilling vanilla all over the Tartan seatcovers — There’s no room anymore anyway for a hitch hiker, tho conceivably the poor bastard might be allowed to ride like a meek gunman or silent murderer in the very back platform of the wagon, but here no, alas! here is ten thousand racks of drycleaned and perfectly pressed suits and dresses of all sizes for the family to look like millionaires every time they stop at a roadside dive for bacon and eggs.”
Kerouac Reading from The Subterraneans
Here is Kerouac reading from The Subterraneans’:
Kerouac On the William F. Buckley Show
And of course if you’ve ever looked up Kerouac on youtube you’ll have found the time when he was on the William F. Buckley interview show “Firing Line” — drunk — on September 3, 1968, only a year before he died, on October 21, 1969, at the age of 47. Kerouac doesn’t come across at his best on the show — but clearly was an independent thinker who cherished freedom, and wasn’t a bullshit artist like the hippie on this program comes across as being.
There is a strong probability that Kerouac — a patriot — would be a pro Trumper today; someone who cherishes freedom against totalitarianism.
Here is Kerouac in much younger and healthier days — 10 years earlier in Greenwich Village in NYC with Alan Ginsburg:
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