"It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning of our journey. I could see that it was all going to be one big saga of the mist. "Whooee!" yelled Dean. "Here we go!" And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; he was back in his element, everybody could see that. We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move. And we moved! We flashed past the mysterious white signs in the night somewhere in New Jersey that say SOUTH (with an arrow) and WEST (with an arrow), and took the south one. New Orleans! It burned in our brains. From the dirty snows of "frosty fagtown New York," as Dean called it, all the way to the greeneries and river smells of old New Orleans at the washed-out bottom of America; then west." From ON THE ROAD

How many writers can claim to have basically invented an entire new form of literature? Well, there's William S. Burroughs and the collage novel... and then there's Jack Kerouac. In his 1957 review of ON THE ROAD, NEW YORK TIMES reviewer Gilbert Millstein said: "...its publication is a historic occasion... ", while the critic for the VILLAGE VOICE called it " a rallying cry for the elusive spirit of rebellion of these times". Prior to ON THE ROAD, Kerouac wrote and published a relatively-typical novel, THE TOWN AND THE CITY, but he was already searching for a "New Vision". Influenced by a circle of friends which included Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, and, of course, Neal Cassady (the real-life "Dean Moriarty" of ROAD), Kerouac found that vision after 7 years of off-and-on travelling. ON THE ROAD was written in one dizzying three-week period; Kerouac actually wrote it on a single huge roll of paper so he didn't have to break the flow to change sheets of paper in the typewriter (what he could have done with a computer!). Although Kerouac continued to write after the publication of ON THE ROAD (and some would argue that THE DHARMA BUMS, produced in '58, is his best work), he had a hard time living up to the hype generated by ROAD. He died from abdominal hemorrhaging brought on by alcoholism in 1969, at the age of 47, but the Beat Generation he helped define lives on.

FILMS: THE SUBTERRANEANS (1960) - Well, what can one say about a "Beatnik" film produced by MGM and starring Leslie Caron and George Peppard?
PULL MY DAISY (1958), written and narrated by Kerouac and directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and others. YES, WE HAVE IT!! This 28 minute Beat monument is available on VHS cassette for $50.
HEART BEAT (1980), directed by John Byrum. A fictionalized account of the relationship between Kerouac (John Heard), Cassady (Nick Nolte), and Carolyn Cassady (Sissy Spacek). Great cast, so-so flick.

Jack Kerouac - A good collection of Kerouac resources, including bibliography
The Beat Page is an excellent resource for all the Beats!

And don't forget the alt.books.beatgeneration discussion group!

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