‘Kerouac’s Road: The Beat of a Nation’ (review)

On This Day: Kerouac's On The Road

"On The Road," was the book that spurred on the Beat movement, ushering in the 60's and 70's. Britannica: The free-form book describes a series of frenetic trips across the United States by a number of penniless young people who are in love with life, beauty, jazz, sex, drugs, speed, and mysticism and who have absolute contempt for alarm clocks, timetables, road maps, mortgages, pensions, and all traditional American rewards for industry. The bo…

‘Kerouac’s Road: The Beat of a Nation’ (review)

The United States of America seems to exist in a perpetual Groundhog Day circuit of endless repetition.  Civil rights battles are waged, won, and erased. The cultural consciousness expands, yet somehow never enough to prevent it from eventually contracting again. Or, as the noted Kerouac enthusiast Janis Joplin once suggested, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to […]