Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Happy Birthday, On the Road!
The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media: "It was on this day in 1957 that Jack Kerouac's book On the Road was published. His inspiration for the book came 10 years earlier, when he decided to follow his friend Neal Cassady west across the country. Cassady was an ex-convict from Denver who had actually been born in a car, and who became a car thief when he was 14 years old. By the time Kerouac met him, Cassady had stolen more than 500 cars and had been arrested 10 times. Kerouac later wrote, 'All my other current friends were intellectuals ... [but Cassady] was a wild yea-saying overburst of American Joy.'"
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2 comments:
I read ON THE ROAD when I was about twenty, which is probably the perfect age to read it, because I loved it and went on to read several more of Kerouac's books. I'd like to go back and reread it someday, but I'll probably never get around to it.
I'd like to read the new version that's been released, THE ORIGINAL SCROLL.
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