Product Description

On the Road chronicles Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent-from East Coast to West Coast to Mexico-with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West."

Read by Will Patton

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39377 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
A 50th anniversary hardcover edition of Kerouac’s classic novel that defined a generation

Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "beat" and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that "set them free." Based on Kerouac's adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose four cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon, and imbued with Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up. This hardcover edition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of the novel in 1957 and will be a must-have for any literature lover.

Celebrating 50 Years of On the Road

In three weeks in a Manhattan apartment in April 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his first satisfactory draft of On the Road as a single, 120-foot scroll. On the Road: The Original Scroll prints the text of this remarkable literary artifact in book form.

Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think): John Leland, author of Hip: A History, argues that On the Road still matters not for its youthful rebellion but because it is full of lessons about how to grow up.

From the back cover of On the Road: The Original Scroll: Jack Kerouac displaying one of his later scroll manuscripts, most likely The Dharma Bums

Kerouac's map of his first hitchhiking trip, July-October 1947 (click image to see the full map) Original New York Times review of On the Road (click image to see the full review)

About the Author
Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York, where he met Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published by Viking in 1957, that made him one of the best known authors of his time. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven.

From AudioFile
The year 2007 marked the 50th anniversary of this modern classic, and an audio interpretation is a marvelous way to experience Kerouacs free-flowing prose. Will Patton, noted for his performance of books by James Lee Burke, is a fine match for this text. ON THE ROAD is a winding, meandering journey, and Pattons performance as narrator provides the map. His voice brings the vitality of Kerouacs sense of spontaneity into being. Patton creates distinct voices for the two main characters, speaking for Kerouac in the guise of the observant Sal Paradise and for his friend Neal Cassady in the guise of the pleasure-seeking Dean Moriarty. Patton is appropriately quiet or exuberant, optimistic or cautious, and an ideal guide into the experience that is ON THE ROAD. R.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

50th Anniversary Edition: Same Book, Different Cover
My review is about this particular release of the book, not the author's fine story itself.

Jack Kerouac's On The Road is a magnificent book I read every single summer. I already own a couple of well-worn paperback versions, along with the hardcover 40th Anniversary Edition, so as a great fan I could hardly wait to get my hands on this latest version, touted as the 50th Anniversary Edition; but imagine my dismay, then, when I found my new, much-anticipated purchase to be the exact same book as the 40th Anniversary Edition, except for a different dust-cover!

I guess I don't know what I was expecting...perhaps an expanded introduction, maybe additional pictures of, say, Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg. SOMETHING! At the very least, you might think there would be a change to the typeface, different paper used, or an alteration to the layout, but, no, NOTHING!

And when I get around to reading it, I bet I find the very same typos in the very same places.

Again, this is not a rant about Kerouac's masterpiece, which is perhaps my very favorite read; I'm simply expressing my disappointment in the 50th Anniversary Edition, which hasn't changed one bit in ten long years. It's still a fine release, however, one worthy of most anyone's library; but it could have been, should have been, made into something special -- something memorable and collectible.

They might have changed the dust-cover, but the editors failed to remove the dust for those of us who already own the 40th Anniversary Edition and were anxiously awaiting another, unique version for our bookshelves.

If you already own a copy of On The Road and desire something truly "different" to add to your Kerouac collection, try On The Road: The Original Scroll.

On the Road: The Original Scroll

A Young Man's Book
After six months of reading Trollope (and loving it) this year, I realized it was time to put the Victorians behind me for a while and started checking out the New York Times book reviews. Coincidentally, the 50th anniversary of "On the Road" came to my attention. It seemed like gross oversight to have lived in America for 50 years and not know anything of Kerouac.

"On the Road" seems like a young man's book (both for the writer and the reader). I wish I'd come to Kerouac 30 years earlier, at which time I was living in Manhattan among a circle of friends all taking ourselves way too seriously. For a susceptible young mind, reading it might encourage indulgence in more youthful high-spirited madness and irresponsible experience; perhaps that's healthy, perhaps not, but it would create memories. "On the Road" is a great promotion for Life and Experience (and less brooding).

However, that said, reading the book (as a man in his fifth decade), I appreciated the book without finding it a consistently enjoyable or satisfying experience. Within the first hundred pages, I became impatient with the sameness of all the events of the book and its characters. I stayed with the book out of curiosity and hope, trusting that there would be development or growth of either character or plot.

But, reading of the characters' somewhat redundant frenetic buzzings here and there, the picture that often came to mind was that of a flea circus: all frenzied mindless activity without purpose or pattern ("sound and fury signifying nothing").

I suspect that, if one read only the first 50 pages and the last 50, little of the experience of reading the book would be lost, and this is hardly a recommendation for a book. The exception would be the loss of some fine passages of prose poetry. If one stops focusing on plot and development, there can be satisfaction to be had from savoring the descriptive writing.

Is it possible to care about a book without caring about the characters? I'd go so far as to say that there were no real characters. Dean is a speech pattern, a distinctive highly-energized speech pattern, but he seems little more. Reading Sal's frequent references to Dean's madness, I wondered if Sal meant that Dean was literally mad and if the book's culmination might be his total mental dissolution. But, at the end, Dean was still sweating and rubbing his belly and babbling as in the first chapter. Sal the observer, himself seems a bottomless vessel; more and more may be poured into him, but he never fills and nothing of substance pours back out. And the rest of the characters are largely interchangeable.

In the end, I think it's easy to esteem "On the Road" as a kick in the butt of literature, and as a new-sounding (for the time) and distinctive voice. But I'm not driven to seek out more.

Ultimate Version of a Classic redone
Everything old is new again!

I remember reading Jack Kerouac immortal novel of a road trip when I was in high school. About ten years later, I heard a Rhino record collection of Kerouac reading abridged cuts from his novel with Steve Allen (yes, author/actor/former Tonight show host) playing piano in the background. About five years later, Durkin Hayes audio had David (Kung Fu) Carradine reading an abridged version of the novel. About five years ago, Caedmon audio had Matt Dillon read an unabridged version of Road. Now Will Patton has stepped up to the audio plate, orating an unabridged recording of Road

Patton brings a southern charm to his narration of this classic American novel of an anatomy of a road trip early 1950's. This audio capture the beatnik era in the reading. Patton's vocal shading is amazing to listen to.He seem to capture the era and the characters with a quick change in his voice or tone

As I have said, I have other versions before, but this seem to be a verbal time capsule of an era gone by.

For those who have not read the book, this audio will be a perfect chance to listen to great literature.

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD