Dimensions
126 x 198 x 25mm
In conformist 1950s America, Jack Kerouac's On the Road was greeted with both delirium and dismay. For his generation - a 'generation waiting to be written' - he and the universe he created symbolised freedom. He identified the living pulse of America in jazz clubs and fast cars, and found vibrancy in hoboes hopping freight cars and travelling the highways. In his hunt for the big experience and his longing for greatness, Kerouac has inspired each successive generation. He is now an icon, an image, an attitude, forever personifying 'the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time . . .'Barry Miles, friend and official biographer of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, provides a meticulously researched exploration of the complex man and extraordinary writer whose creative mishmash of joyous incoherence, drug-induced ecstasy, genuine mysticism and constant craving has persuaded so many to take to the road.
