“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there.”

Fifty years later, Sal and Dean are still on the road and still fresh in the minds of America’s youth. It may seem paradoxical that Jack Kerouac’s On the Road has become such a staple of American high school curricula. Never before has the cultural symbolism of the American road trip faced such serious threats of becoming obsolete. Today’s youth can cross the nation in seconds online, or can catch a high-speed train or airplane for little more than the cost of filling an SUV with a couple tanks of high-octane gasoline.

But the message of the Beat poets goes on, and not just because it is commonly force-fed to students. In fact, fascination with Beat literature and culture is experiencing something of a renaissance, with not only Kerouac but fellow hipsters William S. Burroughs ’36 and Allen Ginsburg enjoying the spotlight.

Kerouac’s Road

Perhaps the best starting point for understanding Jack Kerouac, his movement and eventually its persistence, is another Dean Moriarty quote from On The Road. “Oh man,” Dean says to Sal in his lyrical way, sitting in a bar and observing the world around him, “Dig the street of life.” Dean’s verbal wonderment captures not only the central metaphor of the work, but the hope for beatnik happiness amid a world of inescapable restrictions.

For Kerouac, the fun was undeniably in the journey. Getting there was almost immaterial. Life—or a life worth living—was made up of the wild adventures one found on the road.

Despite his Ivy-League education and relatively peaceful childhood, it cannot be questioned that Kerouac spoke from experience on the points of adventure and staying in motion. The wild lives of his fictional characters were only surpassed by those of the writer himself and his bohemian friends. Although truth be told, separating these two groups is not so simple—Kerouac’s eclectic friendships were in many cases thinly disguised models for those Sal Paradise found on the road.

“The Gang”

Neal Cassady was the inspiration for Dean Moriarty. His wife, Carolyn, was the model for Dean’s first wife, Marylou. Now 78, Carolyn Cassady has published a book, Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsburg, spilling her memories of the wild days that shaped Kerouac’s life and writing. True to “Dean” form, Neal Cassady led a life of drinking and sex. He was recklessly unfaithful, and for a time “loaned” Carolyn out to his pal Kerouac. Apparently Cassady’s sexual escapades were not limited to womanizing, as his wife once inadvertently interrupted her husband in an intimate moment with Allen Ginsburg.

But sex—with however many people, of whatever gender—was hardly newsworthy within a crowd where anything seemed to go. Kerouac himself was an alcoholic and a Bezedrine addict and died of alcohol-related causes at the age of 47. He faced frequent bouts of depression and spent time in jail, first as an accessory to murder and again for having not paid child support. He was also staunchly racist, according to Beat historian James Cambell.

Allen Ginsburg was in and out of psychiatric wards. It was in one of these that the poet met Carl Solomon, who became a friend of the group and was Ginsburg’s inspiration for “Howl.” Solomon was committed after trying to steal a cafeteria sandwich in front of a uniformed policeman.

Burroughs was a renowned wild-man and morphine addict, notorious for having cut off his own finger. In 1951, Burroughs turned to his wife at a party, and with the words, “I guess it’s about time for our William Tell act,” raised a gun and shot her in the head.

Kerouac was the linchpin that held together this strange mix of personalities. On the Road was similarly the central work supporting the movement. Gilbert Millstein wrote prophetically in the New York Times’ first review of the book: “Just as, more than any other novel of the Twenties, The Sun Also Rises came to be regarded as the testament of the Lost Generation, so it seems certain that On the Road will come to be known as that of the Beat Generation.” But true as Millstein’s words are, his predictions have still fallen short of capturing the work’s full significance. The present popularity of On the Road represents more than simply a spot-on historical reference point. It proves that unlike his style, Kerouac’s angst-ridden themes span generations.

Why the Beat is Back

Beyond establishing the niche that Kerouac has found in modern literary and cultural canons, one must dare to ask why: What is it about our high-speed, jet-plane and bullet-train culture that makes us yearn for something more? What is it about Kerouac’s romanticized journey that fills this void?

Perhaps our high-speed culture, which at first glance might seem likely to drive On the Road into obsolescence, is at least in part responsible for the book’s ongoing relevance. Sal’s peace is not found because he is bumming around America, but because of the experiences he has on his way. He finds release in bars and bop-joints and in witnessing the lives of Dean, Carlo Marx, Remi Boncoeur, Chad King and a host of other characters he meets on his way. In short, the release is not about getting anywhere, but the journey itself—or life.

In today’s world, this kind of angst is only exacerbated when the journey is an hour-long shuttle-flight from New York to Boston, or when one can “travel the world” online, without talking to anybody, tasting the food or heaven forbid getting bitten by the mosquitoes. These experiences that make up life’s very fabric are so easily lost in the perpetual race to be the world’s youngest investment banker, then the world’s richest investment banker and finally the world’s youngest retiree. One can hardly wonder at the fact that Beat literature and the honest, unpretentious personal experiences it often features are at the center of the inevitable backlash. Neither should one be surprised at the resurgent desire for the journey.

“A Kerouac Odyssey”

If Harvard students feel up to the journey, they can catch up on Kerouac and the Beats at the release of a new documentary this weekend. A Kerouac Odyssey premieres today in Lowell, Mass., the mill-town in which Kerouac was born, and will play through March 12, the late author’s eightieth birthday.

The project has been 20 years in the making. Writer-director Doug Sharples was inspired by Allen Ginsburg, who in 1982 staged a ten-day celebration of Kerouac intended, as Sharples remembers, to “turn the tide against the literary establishment that was still leery of Kerouac even thirteen years after his death.”

In the years since, Ginsburg’s tide-turning effort has proved undeniably successful, and critics who were once quick to write off the author have for the most part either changed their minds or passed into oblivion.

And so A Kerouac Odyssey is framed not in defense of the author, but simply in memory. It is a documentary firmly “rooted in the 20th century, Kerouac’s century,” says Sharples, and captures the intellectual struggles of a man trying to reconcile the “naïve and hopeful” with “bouts of existential despair.”

“There have to be minions of neo-hipsters, as well as earnest scholars of 20th century American literature at Harvard, who . . . would dig this movie,” says Sharples.

film

A Kerouac Odyssey

Directed by Doug Sharples

Starring Bill Mabon

Real Films