Gilbert Millstein wrote the original New York Times review published on Sept. 5, 1957. Paper Cuts blogger and New York Times Book Review senior editor Dwight Gardner calls it “probably the most famous book review in the history of this newspaper.”
Joyce Johnson, a former girlfriend who was with Jack Kerouac the night he read the rave review, wrote about her experience in Minor Characters and has been interviewed extensively recently, including on the radio program On Point and at Critical Mass. She wrote about that night for Vanity Fair.
The Los Angeles Times recently asked Johnson and 28 other writers, including Pico Iyer and Geoff Dyer, to share their thoughts about the book.
Several interviews of Kerouac himself are archived online, including one with Steve Allen and conversations between Kerouac and Neal Cassady, the inspiration for Dean Moriarty. An interview in French is at Radio Canada.
Norman Podhoretz responded to “On the Road” in 1958 with a famous critique of Kerouac and the Beats, The Know-Nothing Bohemians.
In Newsweek, David Gates writes that Podhoretz has probably done more for Kerouac’s career than Millstein. That’s the same Gates who in 1999 wrote about Breaking up With the Beats in Salon.
In Wired in 1998, David Batstone argued that Kerouac helped pave the way for the digital revolution.
New looks at “On the Road” from the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and The Guardian in honor of the book’s 50th anniversary and the publication of the original scroll.
Watch a video of the unrolling of the scroll in Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Mass.
OnTheRoad.org has images of the scroll and its tour schedule through 2008.
This site compiles the covers of U.S. and international editions of Kerouac’s “On the Road.”
Kerouac’s 1969 obituary from the New York Times. He died at the age of 47.
Related on World Hum:
* The Distance Between Then and Now
* We Don’t (Really) Know Jack
* Will ‘On the Road’ Ever Be Made Into a Movie?
* Icons: Jack Kerouac
Michael Yessis is co-editor of World Hum
