"On the Road," Jack Kerouac

USA 1950s

In the USA in the 1950's, everything was on hold, suspended like dust particles in a beam of light in a closed, claustrophobic room. The particles themselves had life but no one had found a meaningful way to bind them together or give them a direction. Kerouac's "On the Road" did both; it caused so many accepted things to change: genres of literature, ways to experience growing up and methods of self-expression were never the same, and the new ones taking their place gave rise to the cultural and political revolution of the 1960's.

ellen