![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() (Cassady usually drove after a childhood car accident, Kerouac hated to be behind the wheel.) In fact, Kerouac was inspired by Cassady’s straightforward, vernacular writing style–the poet Frank O’Hara described it as “I do this, I do that”–and he adapted it to his own epic narrative: To tell the story of his journey, he just wrote down what happened. Cassady–Dean Moriarty in the book–was a colorful character, a charming and good-looking hustler, occasional car thief (or not-so-occasional: he claimed to have stolen more than 500 cars while growing up on the streets of Denver), and aspiring writer who accompanied Kerouac on most of his journeys. “On the Road” is an autobiographical novel about a series of cross-country automobile trips that Kerouac made between 19, both by himself and with his friend Neal Cassady. “Jack went to bed obscure,” Kerouac’s girlfriend told a reporter, “and woke up famous.” On September 5, 1957, New York Times writer Gilbert Millstein gives a rave review to “On the Road,” the second novel (hardly anyone had read the first) by a 35-year-old Columbia dropout named Jack Kerouac. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |