A Hitchhikers Guide to Jack Kerouac
Explore the essential Jack Kerouac reading list with our Hitchhiker's Guide, featuring On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and more Beat generation classics.
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac’s classic American novel of freedom and the search for originality that defined a generation “An authentic work of art.”—The New York Times Inspired by Jack Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose 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.
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The Subterraneans
by Jack Kerouac
Written over the course of three days and three nights, The Subterraneans was generated out of the same ecstatic flash of inspiration that produced another one of Kerouac's early classic, On The Road. Centering on the tempestous breakup of Leo Percepied and Mardou Fox--two denizens of the 1950s San Francsico underground--The Subterraneans is a tale of dark alleys and dark rooms, of artists, of visionaries,
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The Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature “In [On the Road] Kerouac’s heroes were sensation seekers; now they are seekers after truth . . . the novel often attains a beautiful dignity.”—Chicago Tribune First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac’s most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans—mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer—whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco’s Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
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Visions of Cody
by Jack Kerouac
Written during 1951-52, this novel was an underground legend by the time it was finally published in 1972. Written in an experimental form, Kerouac created the ultimate account of his voyages with Neal Cassady, which he captured in a different form for On the Road.
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You Can't Go Home Again
by Thomas Wolfe
Novelist George Webber is driven from his hometown when his successful autobiographical novel infuriates the family and friends he has depicted in it.