On the Road

On the Road is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Viking Press in 1957. This largely autobiographical work, written as a stream of consciousness and based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America, is often considered the defining work of the postwar jazz-, poetry-, and drug-affected Beat Generation.

Quotes

• "I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's."

:-- Bob Dylan

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• "I suppose if Jack Kerouac had never written On The Road, The Doors would never have existed. It opened the floodgates."

:- Ray Manzarek, The Doors' keyboard player

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• "If you're working with words, it's got to be poetry. I grew up with Kerouac. If he hadn't wrote On The Road, the Doors would have never existed. Morrison read On The Road down in Florida, and I read it in Chicago. That sense of freedom, spirituality, and intellectuality in On The Road -- that's what I wanted in my own work."

:- Ray Manzarek

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~