Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” has inspired two generations of adventurers and armchair travelers to revel in a “wild yea-saying burst of American joy.”
But author John Leland finds new reasons to crack the book in “Why Kerouac Matters,” an examination of the Beat classic timed to the 50th anniversary of “On the Road.”
The adventure manual of teenage flower children was written by a late-20’s divorcee who “had nothing but regret for the ‘60’s counter-culture,” according to Leland. “Kerouac called it a powerful and singularly gloomy book,” he says in this conversation.
