All-TIME 100 Novels

On the Road

The book that launched a thousand trips. For his hyperkinetic, endearing, culture-changing novel, Kerouac admitted whole worlds through his windshield. An account of a few pinwheeling characters in perpetual cross-country motion, it has room to spare for rivers, landscapes, starry skies, Benzedrine addicts, endless marathons of driving, the hipster demiurge Dean Moriarty and lots of other fast-talking madmen. “Because the only people for me are the mad ones,” Kerouac’s narrator, Sal Paradise, tells us. “The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” Capote’s famous putdown of the book got it exactly backwards. That’s not typing, Truman. That’s writing.

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