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On the Road by Jack Kerouac
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On the Road (1957)

by Jack Kerouac (Author)

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
18,33821282 (3.71)698
1001 (61) 1950s (109) 20th century (212) America (126) American (297) American fiction (60) American literature (344) autobiographical fiction (56) autobiography (96) beat (771) Beat Generation (368) Beat Literature (87) beatnik (103) classic (347) classics (216) drugs (109) fiction (1,784) Jack Kerouac (58) Kerouac (102) literature (355) memoir (151) non-fiction (104) novel (348) own (78) read (221) road trip (203) to-read (120) travel (400) unread (99) USA (148)
  1. 91
    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (MyriadBooks)
  2. 51
    Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (hippietrail)
  3. 30
    Off the Road: My Years With Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg by Carolyn Cassady (Jannes)
    Jannes: Interesting behind-the-scenes look, and also something of an counterpoint to the tendency of over-romanticizing Jack and the gang that we, or at least I, are sometimes guiltily of. If you're a Beat-geek you can't really ignore this one.
  4. 63
    Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (thiagobomfim)
  5. 20
    The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac (soulster)
  6. 42
    On the Road: The Original Scroll (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Jack Kerouac (rickybutler)
    rickybutler: If you still have the choice, do not pick up the originally-published edition and instead go for the Original Scroll. This should be on its way to replacing just plain ol' On the Road as the primo Kerouac (and even Beat) text for the adventurous romantics to become enamored with. More rhythm, more life, more of that depressing truth that filled Kerouac's subsequent work. It's a much stronger book.… (more)
  7. 10
    Théorie du voyage : Poétique de la géographie by Michel Onfray (askthedust)
  8. 00
    Big Sur by Jack Kerouac (John_Vaughan)
  9. 00
    One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road by Gerald Nicosia (mrkay)
  10. 11
    The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño (hippietrail)
  11. 13
    The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (hippietrail)
  12. 011
    Ye Ole Fiendly Towne and Other Whittier Zombie Haikus: Whittier is suddenly scoured with zombies! And just where is Doobie McDonald during these mayhaps...BAY-beh!? by Doobie McDonald (privycouncilpress)
    privycouncilpress: A road trip film symbolizing the mindtrip your soul will have while reading 'Ye Ole Fiendly Towne and Other Whittier Zombie Haikus"
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English (191)  French (5)  Italian (4)  German (3)  Dutch (3)  Spanish (3)  Danish (2)  Swedish (1)  All languages (212)
Showing 1-5 of 191 (next | show all)
Madness, friends, and longing. ( )
1 vote EricFitz08 | Apr 27, 2013 |
What a piece of crap! I don't get the hype over this book. A slacker goes across the country and hangs with other slackers and this is a great work. Books must have been REALLY BAD in 1955-1957 if this is a classic. Sal, Dean and the rest of this group needs to get a life, and if this Kerouac best book I don't even want to read his other stuff!

A classic that I just don't get ( )
  foof2you | Apr 5, 2013 |
My 1.5 stars are for the really quite beautiful descriptive prose. Frankly, there are enough self-important, selfish, self-aggrandising arseholes in the world as it is and I chose not spend time with them. I have no desire to spend my reading time with the same kind of person and so am putting this back on the shelf at the 2/3 mark. I have no problem with dropping out, doing drugs and bollocking on while on said drugs but am not interested in people who believe their happiness and "freedom" are more important than everyone else's happiness and freedom, and that anyone who disagrees with that idea is a pathetic, petty square.

To my mind, this is basically the documentation of one somewhat pretentious and immature young man's hero worship of a moronic, abusive young man who treats everyone around him like shit. I believe Sal has some kind of realisation about this in the end, but for me that is too little, too late. ( )
1 vote Vivl | Apr 5, 2013 |
Kerouac was a genius. Especially if it's true that he banged this book out in three manic, smoke-filled weeks at his typewriter. He took a bunch of people I despise, doing things that I find abhorrent, and kept me riveted the entire way through the book. This one was phenomenal on audio. ( )
  readrunandrepeat | Apr 3, 2013 |
If I could give this 2.5 I would. ( )
  jnorath | Apr 2, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 191 (next | show all)
With his barbaric yawp of a book. Kerouac commands attention as a kind of literary James Dean.
added by Shortride | editTime (Sep 16, 1957)
 

» Add other authors (39 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Kerouac, JackAuthorprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Bueno, EduardoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Charters, AnnIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Golüke, GuidoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vandenbergh, JohnTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up.
Quotations
". . . and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"
In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco.   There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too; where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths roasted dry and good enough to eat too.  Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu, and I'd eat it; let me smell the butter and lobster claws.  There were places where hamburgers sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel.  And oh, that pan fried chow mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of North Beach, the soft-shell crab of Fisherman's Wharf- nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits! Throw in the Market street chili beans, red-hot, and french-fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that's ah-dream of San Francisco.  Add fog, hunger making, raw fog, and the throb of neons in the soft night, the clack of high heeled beauties, white doves in a Chinese grocery window.
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Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0140042598, Paperback)

On The Road, the most famous of Jack Kerouac's works, is not only the soul of the Beat movement and literature, but one of the most important novels of the century. Like nearly all of Kerouac's writing, On The Road is thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac's real life friends, lovers, and fellow travelers. Narrated by Sal Paradise, one of Kerouac's alter-egos, On the Road is a cross-country bohemian odyssey that not only influenced writing in the years since its 1957 publication but penetrated into the deepest levels of American thought and culture.

(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 28 Sep 2010 04:47:39 -0400)

(see all 7 descriptions)

Story of two restless young men in the late 1940s who cross and recross America, encountering parties, girls, drugs, loneliness and their own dreams along the way.

» see all 13 descriptions

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Audible.com

Three editions of this book were published by Audible.com.

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Penguin Australia

Five editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0141182679, 0140265007, 0141037482, 0241951534, 0141198206

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