On the Road

On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer <a href="/facts/Jack_Kerouac/xH8kCsUB">Jack Kerouac</a>, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar <a href="/facts/Beat_Generation/PCF9pM7N">Beat</a> and <a href="/facts/Counterculture_of_the_1960s/BjyVc83W">Counterculture</a> generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of <a href="/facts/Jazz/lmUzXGq8">jazz</a>, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a <a href="/facts/Roman_%25C3%25A0_clef/UwR8Glvn">roman à clef</a>, with many key figures of the Beat movement represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator, Sal Paradise. The idea for the book formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks and was then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was first published by <a href="/facts/Viking_Press/DEd2dk7M">Viking Press</a>.
<a href="/facts/The_New_York_Times/T9marWVX">The New York Times</a> hailed the book's appearance as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest, and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac, himself, named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is." In 1998, the <a href="/facts/Modern_Library/HY0x3k13">Modern Library</a> ranked On the Road 55th on its list of the <a href="/facts/Modern_Library_100_Best_Novels/Bm0dGVDW">100 best English-language novels of the 20th century</a>. The novel was chosen by <a href="/facts/Time_(magazine)/N4FXc99l">Time</a> magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

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On the Road