On the Road , Jack Kerouac ’s current - of - awareness travelog , chart the escapade of two friends — storyteller Sal Paradise and his wild Colorado - pilot Dean Moriarty — as they road trip their room across the United States to find a deeper meaning within their country , as well as themselves . Here ’s what you should know about thebook . ( And for more entrancing fact about your favorite classic novel and their authors , pick up Mental Floss ’s book , The Curious Reader : A Literary Miscellany of Novels & Novelists ) .
1. The scroll story often told aboutOn the Roadis a little misleading.
Literary fable has it that Kerouac wroteOn the Road , his 2d novel , spontaneously over three weeks in April 1951 . It ’s a story that Kerouacplayed uphimself , but in fact , he prepared extensively , keeping journalsandbuying roadmaps to study . “ I have another novel in mind—‘On the Road’—which I keep retrieve about : two guys hitchhiking to California in search of something they do n’t really find , and losing themselves on the road , and hail all the way back hopeful of something else , ” he wrote in an August 1948 journal unveiling . He produced a draft of the novel — one of several — not long after .
2. The first drafts ofOn the Roadwere quite different from the finished product.
Kerouac often used his own liveliness , and his friend , as inspiration for his fabricated works , andOn the Roadwas no exception . The novel was based on several route trips Kerouac had taken , and protagonist Sal Paradise was based on Kerouac himself ; Dean Moriarty is a stand - in for Neal Cassady . In the first draft of the novel , however , the protagonist was name Ray Smith , thenSmitty . other drafts also had a more conventional structure than the final resolution . Kerouactoyed around with other titles , too , includingBeat GenerationandShades of the Prison House .
3. Jack Kerouac was inspired by a letter from Neal Cassady.
Kerouac had a breakthrough in December 1950 , courtesy of a missive he received from Cassady , who had penned the 13,000 - watchword , 40 - Thomas Nelson Page letter on a three - daytime Benzedrine high . It was , Kerouac would later say , “ All first person , tight , disturbed , confessional , completely serious , all detail . ” He dubbed the fashion “ spontaneous prose . ” In April 1951 , Kerouac sat down at his typewriter and , in 20 days , wrote more than 120,000 words on a scroll of tracing newspaper he’dtaped together .
4. The scroll version ofOn the Roadwas edited extensively.
The scroll was n’t the final translation ofOn the route ; it would take a few more revision and many , manyrejectionsbefore the novel was finally published . As writer Joyce Johnson , whodatedKerouac off - and - on for two years , wouldlater recall , “ each paragraph had to be a ‘ verse form . ’ ” One tale Kerouactoldabout the scroll — that a friend ’s dog had chew off some paragraph at the end — may have actually been a concealment for the fact that he wanted to tweak the termination .
5.On the Roadwas rejected a number of times.
One rejection ship to Kerouac ’s broker , Sterling Lord , register , “ Kerouac does have tremendous talent of a very peculiar kind . But this is not a well made novel , nor a saleable one nor even , I opine , a good one . His frenetic and scramble prose absolutely extract the feverish change of location , geographically and mentally , of the Beat Generation . But is that enough ? I do n’t think so . ” Another noted , “ Our response to Kerouac ’s work was funny almost to a man , in that there was real admiration for his vigorous prose , his capacity to create a live sense of America , of life in this country , and the force and originality of his design . But there were serious objections to the people and situations he save about , whether they would be of compelling interest to many reader . … [ A]ll I might suggest is that he should endeavor for a clearer vision of the novel itself . ”On the Roadwas finally issue byViking Press .
6. A single review madeOn the Roada success.
WhenOn the Roadwas finally publish in September 1957 , it was quickly a best seller , thanks to a review from critic Gilbert Millstein [ PDF ] , who write inThe New York Timesthat the novel was “ 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 chief avatar he is . ”
7. Neal Cassady’s letter was lost for decades.
Neal Cassady ’s “ Joan Anderson letter , ” the inspiration forOn the Road ’s “ ad-lib prose , ” got lost after Kerouac pass the letter to Allen Ginsberg . ( Ginsberg said poet Gerd Stern hadthrown it into San Francisco Bay , which Stern deny . ) Then , in 2012 , the letter was rediscovered : It had been in the “ to read ” pile of mail that had belonged to Richard Emerson , owner of Golden Goose Press . When the business folded , he sent his archive to his colleague , Jack Spinosa , where his daughter find it after Spinosa ’s death . The varsity letter wassold at auctionfor $ 200,000 .
8. The scroll version ofOn the Roadwas reissued in 2007.
In 1962 , Kerouacwrotethat his book , includingOn the Road , The Dharma Bums , andVisions of Buffalo Bill Cody , were “ one vast book like Proust ’s [ Remembrance of Things Past ] … chapter in the whole oeuvre which I callThe Duluoz Legend . ” The writer notice that “ Because of the dissent of my early publisher I was not allow to use the same personae names in each work , ” so alternatively he create new names for the people in his stories . To mark the 50th anniversary ofOn the Roadin 2007 , Penguin Classicsre - releasedKerouac ’s curlicue reading of the novel , featuring setting that had been cut prior to publication and swapping out the character public figure for the names of the masses who had really inspired them .
