On the Road Turns 50


This coming Labor Day, Jack Kerouac’s classic coming-of-age “road novel,” On the Road, turns 50. To celebrate the half-century mark next week, Viking is releasing a 50th anniversary edition. Moreover, the Library of America series is publishing a collection of Kerouac’s novels in one, hard-bound volume, and for the first time, the original version of the book, typed on a 120-foot scroll, will also find its way onto bookshelves this fall. The autobiographical novel that follows Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) on their cross-country sojourns looking for “kicks” still sells 100,000 copies a year.