On the Road

New York: The Viking Press, 1957. First edition. Near Fine/Very Good +. A Near Fine copy with a small spot to the closed foredge of the text block, internally clean and unmarked. In a Very Good+ unrestored first issue jacket. Spine a bit faded, small chips and tears at the spine ends and extremities, otherwise an attractive example. Housed in a blue clamshell case.

"It changed my life like it changed everyone else's," Bob Dylan said of On The Road. Jack Kerouac’s classic Roman A Clef, published in 1957, was the defining work of the beat generation. It follows the travels of Sal Paradise, a stand in for Kerouac himself, and is based on a series (truncated) of journeys Kerouac took from 1947 to 1950. The work was typed up on a continuous “scroll” of sheets that Kerouac had taped together. On The Road appears on both Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels of the century and on Time Magazine list of the 100 best English language novels from 1923-2005. “[I]ts publication is a historic occasion… 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” (Contemporary New York Times review). Near Fine in Very Good + dust jacket. (Inventory #: 5614)