Category: On the Road

  • Lightning, the Lightning Bug, and the Price of Some of Kerouac’s Revisions

    **Be forewarned, adult language/content** Mark Twain once said something like (I don’t have the direct quote in front of me): “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” Agree or disagree, Twain has a point. To illustrate, I give you two passages from On the Road…

  • Charactouac? or Kerouacter?

    “New Criticism locates meaning in the internal qualities of literary works, specifically the unity of their multiple verbal structures. as much as it values unity and convergence, New Criticism eschews authorial intent and historical context as bases for interpretation, although it allows that they might supplement understanding.” ~Joshua Kupetz, “The Straight Line Will Take You…

  • The Scroll

    Once upon a time there was young man named Jack who wrote a novel on a long scroll – one hundred feet long – no punctuation – no paragraph breaks – no rules – hopped up on bennies. After spending seven years on the roads across America, and occasionally down to Mexico – after typing…

  • The Great American Novel and Jack Kerouac

    The Great American Novel. Books as varied as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and, more recently, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom have all been considered for the title of Great American…