On the Road was Jack Kerouac's second novel to be published. Along with Ginsberg's Howl and Burroughs' Naked Lunch, it would serve as the foundation for a movement that became known as the Beat Generation. Of course, it was Herbert Hunke who first brought the term 'beat' to the attention of Kerouac and his friends in the late 40's, and it would be John Clellon Holmes' book Go that would first use the term beat. Ann Charters writes, "The young people who responded to the book recognized that Kerouac was on their side, the side of youth and freedom."

The history of the publication of On The Road has been legendary, most of it true. The cross country trips that Kerouac recounts took place in the late 40's. Kerouac wrote the first version of On the Road in 1948, shortly after having finished the manuscript for The Town and the City.

In 1950 Kerouac received a letter from Cassady and "seeing how good old Neal Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional, completely serious, all detailed," Kerouac started developing his own style that coupled Cassady's madcap style with that of another friend, architect Ed White, who suggested that Kerouac sketch events, like an artist sketches a scene.

Kerouac starting writing in amphetamine supported binges that would last for days in a style that he would eventually call spontaneous writing.

He started on the famous scroll on April 2, 1951, and by April 22 was finished. The scroll was made up of 12-foot long sheets of tracing paper (there is still some debate over what paper was used) that were taped together into one long continuous roll that he fed into the typewriter so that he wouldn't have to stop to change pages and possibly lose the moment that he was tying to capture. That effort resulted in a continuous scroll was 120 feet long, single spaced.

Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty are born

It would take years before Viking would agree to publish the book. One of Viking's concerns was possible libel suits, so Kerouac gave the characters of the book fictitious names when the novel was finally published, and obtained signed releases from Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg.

Its publication date was September 5, 1957, and it sold so well that there was a second printing on September 20, and a third printing ordered shortly afterwards. There were many negative reviews at the time, but word of mouth helped On the Road made the best-seller list for five weeks late in 1957 getting as high as number 11.  Kerouac had quietly written 16 other unpublished books by that time.

Viking reports that On the Road has sold over 3 million copies, and is selling over 60,000 copies a year. It was translated into over 25 languages. And it shows no sign of slowing down.

[On the Road Scroll sells at auction]

dharma beat LINKS 

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road.

From the beginning of On the Road... the book that established Jack Kerouac as an icon... the spokesman for the Beat Generation... that validated his countless hours of writing... that justified the hundreds of thousands of words that he had typed late into the night... that finally allowed the world to recognize him as a writer.

On September 5, 1957, while Eisenhower was President (and Nixon Vice-president), Gilbert Millstein declared in his New York Times book review of On the Road:

There are sections of "On the Road" in which the writing is of a beauty almost breathtaking. There is a description of a cross-country automobile ride fully the equal, for example, of the train ride told by Thomas Wolfe in "Of Time and the River." There are details of a trip to Mexico (and an interlude in a Mexican bordello) that are by turns, awesome, tender and funny. And, finally, there is some writing on jazz that has never been equaled in American fiction, either for insight, style or technical virtuosity. "On the Road" is a major novel.

Office memo's from Viking dated as early as 10/22/53 from Helen K. Taylor, a Viking senior editor said:

I heartily agree with you feeling that this is a "classic of our times." I hope that we will get a book out of it that we will publish quietly and with conviction.

...The book stirred me for two sets of reasons, operating concurrently. First, Kerouac's bold writing talent: it's lavish, reckless, but for all its rapid jitters and seeming carelessness, it is almost always effective. Moreover, the effectiveness does not lessen, but builds an energy of its own that is all-pervasive by the end of the book. The writing is a torrential force that comes directly out of the material, instead of being applied to it. It is almost as if the author did not seem to exist as an outside agency of creation. [Jack Kerouac: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Sources by Robert Milewski, The Scarecrow Press, 1981]

On The Road Publication Information

by Jack Kerouac
Viking Press
New York
$3.95

Unknown number of Hardcover copies issued September 5, 1957

First paperback issued September 1958 by Signet books (D1619).

First British hardcover edition issued May 16, 1958 by Andre Deutch (3,000 copies). First British paperback issued by Pan Books (Pan Giant X84) in 1961.

Published Excerpts:

Parts of chapters 12 and 13, Book One, of On The Road appeared in The Paris Review #11 (Winter 1955) under the title The Mexican Girl (also reprinted in The Best American Short Stories Of 1956 published by Houghton Mifflin in 1956).

Parts of chapters 10 and 14, Book Three, were published in New World Writing #7 entitled Jazz of the Beat Generation (under the pseudonym Jean Louis).

An excerpt from chapter 5 in New Directions 16 entitled A Billowy Trip in the World, published July 5, 1957.

(c) 1997 DHARMA beat and Attila Gyenis