On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

The legendary novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation, now in a striking new Pengiun Classics Deluxe Edition Inspired by Jack Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naiveté and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up. FROM THE PUBLISHER : On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassidy, "a side burned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago. Described as everything from a "last gasp" of romantic fiction to a founding text of the Beat Generation movement, this story amounts to a nonfiction novel (as critics were later to describe some works). Unpublished writer buddies wander from coast to coast in search of whatever they find, eager for experience. Kerouac's spokesman is Sal Paradise (himself) and real-life friend Neal Casady appears as Dean Moriarty. Based on his adventures with Neal Cassady, Kerouac tells the story of two friends, whose four cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Teeming with the rhythms of fifties underground America, jazz, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat"--Adapted from publisher description A reprint of the 1957 novel that defined the beat generation of the 1950s, in which Sal Paradise tells about his travels throughout the North American continent in search of belief and meaning. Follows The Counterculture Escapades Of Members Of The Beat Generation As They Seek Pleasure And Meaning While Traveling Coast To Coast Chronicles the way of life of the beat generation as Dean Moriarty speeds across America FIRST MET DEAN not long after my wife and I split up.