Kerouac's Day

It was on this day, September 5th, in 1957 that Jack Kerouac's book On the Road was published, based on the trip he took across the country 10 years before. He began his journey in New York where he rode a trolley to the edge of Yonkers, and wanted hitchhike, but got to Route 6 at the Connecticut border in the middle of a big rainstorm. No cars picked him up so he gave up, went back to New York, and bought a bus ticket to Chicago. He started hitchhiking there, and he stayed at YMCA's and cheap motels. He crossed the Mississippi, and in Omaha he saw his first cowboy. He rode on the back of a flatbed truck with a group of hobos.

He knew he wanted to write about all of his experiences, and finally in April of 1951, Kerouac sat down at his kitchen table, wound a continuous roll of paper into a typewriter, tuned his radio to an all-night jazz station, and in 20 days had the first draft to his novel. He told the basically true story of his adventures with his friend Neal Cassady, changed Cassady's name to Dean Moriarty and his own name to Sal Paradise.

A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
Jack Kerouac

Accept loss forever.
Jack Kerouac

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
Jack Kerouac

All of life is a foreign country.
Jack Kerouac

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.
Jack Kerouac

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.
Jack Kerouac

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.
Jack Kerouac

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
Jack Kerouac

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.
Jack Kerouac

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
Jack Kerouac

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.
Jack Kerouac

Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.
Jack Kerouac

Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.
Jack Kerouac

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
Jack Kerouac

My witness is the empty sky.
Jack Kerouac

Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.
Jack Kerouac

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
Jack Kerouac

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
Jack Kerouac

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.
Jack Kerouac

You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.
Jack Kerouac


1st Chorus Mexico City Blues

Butte Magic of Ignorance
Butte Magic
Is the same as no-Butte
All one light
Old Rough Roads
One High Iron
Mainway

Denver is the same
'The guy I was with his uncle was
the govornor of Wyoming'
'Course he paid me back'
Ten Days
Two Weeks
Stock and Joint

'Was an old crook anyway'

The same voice on the same ship
The Supreme Vehicle
S.S. Excalibur
Maynard
Mainline
Mountain
Merudvhaga
Mersion of Missy

Jack Kerouac