"Yet when the novel—which might now be called 'creative nonfiction'—appeared, its events were already 10 years in the past. And in 1947, when Kerouac (Sal Paradise in the book) hit the road, the America that obsessed him was already dwindling. Even bebop—apparently the only worthwhile product of modernity—was in decline, from Charlie Parker hot to West Coast cool. Kerouac mostly loved the vestiges of the Great Depression of the '30s: the hobos, hitchhikers, migrant workers and good plain folks just trying to get by. 'In those days,' a cowboy tells Sal, 'you'd see hundreds of men riding a flatcar...all kinds of men out of work and going from one place to another and some of them just wandering... Brakemen never used to bother you in those days. I don't know about today.' Paradise lost, in both senses."
In Newsweek, David Gates marks the fiftieth anniversary of On the Road.
The New York Times offers a slideshow of international book covers of the famed novel.
And the Los Angeles Times serves up an On the Road minisite, including an article by Christopher Reynolds on revisiting locations across the country depicted in the novel and the newspaper's original 1957 pan by Robert R. Kirsch.
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