Fifty years later, 'On the Road' still beckons

Fifty years after the publication of "On the Road," people still flock to Jack Kerouac's most famous work. Nearly 100,000 copies of it sell in the United States each year (up from a steady 50,000 copies annually in the 1970s), in part because of its induction into the academic canon. Readers view the based-in-reality novel – Sept. 5 is the anniversary of its publication – as an adventure guide, a snapshot of the underbelly of postwar America, even a spiritual compass. Critics describe it, in turns, as "an ingenious literary work," a "hippie handbook," and a "fascinating but plotless wreck."

Today, the book that spurred a generation to go against the grain – and that helped spark the counterculture movement of the '60s – still inspires wanderlust, but not rebellion. The millennial generation takes its Kerouac with a grain of salt, observers say. Young people still read "On the Road," but they're not necessarily hitting the road. And those who do hit the road return in time to go to law school.

"Today's readers are a lot more savvy, and they are more cynical," says Ronna Johnson, a lecturer in the English department at Tufts University in Somerville, Mass., and author of a forthcoming book about the reception of Mr. Kerouac's work. Even 15 years ago, she says, the students in her Beat literature classes were mostly young men who wanted to emulate Kerouac by dropping out of college to pursue "kicks." "I don't think college students today are going to drop out and devote themselves to poetry," Ms. Johnson says. "They say, 'All right, drop out of school. But who's going to pay your loans when you are 30 and do your taxes?' "

While following in the footsteps of Kerouac and the Beats may be a relic of generations past, one trend persists: Popular fascination with Kerouac remains participatory. This summer, an estimated 8,000 Americans from as far away as Seattle and New Mexico traveled to this old mill town, Kerouac's birthplace, to see the original manuscript of "On the Road" – a 120-foot-long scroll composed of taped-together onionskin paper that unfurls like the open road traveled by its two central characters.

A brown, grassless patch at the verdant Edson Cemetery marks the path of pilgrims to Kerouac's simple gravestone. And some fans still play the part of Kerouac's car-stealing friend, Neal Cassady (in the book, Dean Moriarty): Bookstores from Berkeley to Harvard say "On the Road" is one of their most frequently shoplifted tomes.

Kerouac's work has found its way into countless classrooms and living rooms, road trips and military missions. He has inspired musical luminaries like Bob Dylan and John Lennon as well as dozens of documentary filmmakers and biographers who have made him their subject. His namesakes include a creative writing school at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., an alley in San Francisco, coffeeshops, pop songs, and of course, landmarks in Lowell and beyond.

"Kerouac writes with the spirit and heart of a person on a quest," says Hillary Hol­laday, professor of English and director of the Kerouac Center for American Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. "If there's a part of you that still has that sense of longing – that desire to figure out who you are – you'll relate to 'On the Road.' "

Kerouac's pull has always been especially strong on youth. After all, "On the Road" is about two men in their 20s exploring America and coming into their own.

Young people today say that reading Kerouac inspires them to travel, but in a different way than the hitchhiking "rucksack revolutionaries" of the 1950s. Moira Burke, a junior at Emmanuel College in Boston, says she loves the "free-spirited sense of searching for yourself" in the novel. She plans to study in Rome this fall and says the book made her realize that "there's so much that people miss by staying in the same place."

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