Romantic poetry and prose, inspiring a jillion journeys: the Jack Kerouac novel On the Road

Road kill, Line Ave
Originally uploaded by trudeau

Kerouac wrote the novel On the Road in three weeks, typing continuously onto a 120-foot roll of teletype paper, he told many interviewers.[3]

However, although the story is true per se, the book was in fact the result of a long and arduous creative process, says Wikipedia.

Kerouac carried small notebooks in which much of the text was written as the eventful span of road trips unfurled. He started working on the first of several versions of the novel as early as 1948, based on experiences during his first long road trip in 1947. However, he remained unsatisfied with the novel.[4]

Inspired by a thousand-word rambling letter from his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac in 1950 outlined the "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" and decided to tell the story of his years on the road with Cassady as if writing a letter to a friend in a form that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz.[5]

It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation.

Filmmakers (Gus Van Sant, Oliver Stone, etc etc), novelists (Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe, etc), songwriters (Bob Dylan, Hendrix, etc) and other artists have, since the 1960's, considered On The Road a biblical text.