Recalling Jack London’s ‘The Road’

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 08.01.07 | 12:08 PM ET

While Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, Jack London’s road trip book, The Road, celebrates its 100th anniversary—albeit with much less fanfare. Yet, writes Jonah Raskin in a terrific piece in The Nation, “London’s account of his wild, eye-opening journey across the country by railroad, boat, on foot—and even barefoot, when his shoes fell apart—remains a pivotal work in the cultural history of America’s long obsession with road travel, roadside attractions and road books.” Not only did “The Road” inspire Kerouac to become a writer, Raskin notes, but it was “a Beat memoir before the advent of the Beats, and an existentialist narrative before the arrival of existentialism.”