Jack Kerouac in Denver: ‘Just Another Traveler on His Way to Wherever’

Travel Blog  •  Michael Yessis  •  01.16.07 | 8:51 AM ET

imageThe original scroll of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is currently on display in Denver, and Westword’s Amy Haimerl uses the occasion to revisit the writer’s time in the city and examine its far-reaching impact.

It was just ten days, 240 hours, 14,400 minutes, but it forever intertwined the destinies of Kerouac and the Queen City of the Plains. No longer just a cowtown, now an epicenter of the Beat Movement. Something, someplace. Producer of an American original that only a post-war America could embrace. A place to search for identity and meaning. The magnetic pull of 5,280 feet above sea level sucking back the Massachusetts boy in body and mind, covering him with the sense of possibility.

Ten. Again. Ten years after that fateful layover, in 1957, Jack Kerouac finally published the file drawers of his mind, the little black notebooks he always kept with him. On the Road was a smashing success, pointing out what disillusioned youth were feeling but couldn’t articulate. Are still feeling. Sex, drugs, jazz, the open road, the future, living and doing for the experience alone, searching out something to give life meaning. A quest. And Denver has a starring role in the existential story.

Haimerl and Westword’s editors have also put together a literary map of Denver, which chronicles the role of Colorado’s capital in books, including Mark Twain’s “Roughing It” and Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

Tags: Literary Travel


3 Comments for Jack Kerouac in Denver: ‘Just Another Traveler on His Way to Wherever’

Amy Haimerl 01.16.07 | 2:06 PM ET

Thanks for the link to my piece. It was a lot of fun to write and pull together all the references to Denver in other novels. If anyone’s interested, here’s the full literary map. What we ran in the paper was just a few stop offs.

http://www.westword.com/php/map/

Michael Yessis 01.18.07 | 8:57 AM ET

Thanks for the link to the full map.

Good stuff, and a great read, Amy.

Dr Larry Myers 09.13.08 | 5:51 PM ET

The Jack Kerouac in Denver website is terrific
I direct The Jack Kerouac Literary Group in NYC
any interested Kerouac devotees contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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