America's first king of the road

Fifty years ago Jack Kerouac's dazzling novel On the Road became the blueprint for the Beat generation and shaped America's youth culture for decades. It influenced scores of artists, musicians and film-makers, but how does it resonate with young people today?

Sean O'Hagan writing on Sunday August 5, 2007 in The Observer.

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On Wednesday 5 September 1957, the New York Times published a lengthy review of On the Road, the second novel by the 35-year-old Jack Kerouac. The reviewer, Gilbert Millstein, called it 'the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat", and whose principal avatar he is'.