7 mins read

The great American road trip, fueled by — and undercut by — the automobile that created it

NASHVILLE, Tenn. | There’s something about the American road trip. It has been memorialized in books like Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and satirized in movies like “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” It primarily consists of hours upon hours of driving that should be boring — but somehow isn’t? Maybe it’s the anticipation of getting to some […]

3 mins read

A 120-foot burst of genius: Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ scroll and its wild afterlife

NEW YORK | In the spring of 1951, the muse landed so hard in the caffeinated mind of Jack Kerouac that within three weeks he had hurried out a full-length, single-spaced manuscript — a draft for “On the Road” that he taped together into a scroll some 120 feet long. Published six years later to […]