On the Road: The Original Scroll

Sal Paradise, a young writer restless in postwar New York, falls under the spell of Dean Moriarty, a wild, charismatic ex-con with an insatiable hunger for experience. Over several years and several journeys, the two crisscross the United States—hitchhiking, driving stolen time in borrowed cars, chasing jazz, women, drugs, and the promise of something just over the next horizon.

Loosely based on Jack Kerouac's own travels with Neal Cassady and written in a headlong, improvisatory style, On the Road became the defining novel of the Beat Generation. Beneath its euphoria runs a current of exhaustion and loss, as the freedom the friends pursue proves harder to hold than to chase.

A landmark of twentieth-century American literature, the book captures a generation's yearning for meaning, movement, and release, and the beauty and wreckage left in its wake.