On the Road is a 1957 novel by American author Jack Kerouac, inspired by his travels across the United States. It is widely regarded as a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation, following a group of friends living for the moment against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and rebellion. The novel is a roman à clef, featuring characters based on central figures of the Beat movement. Kerouac appears as the narrator under the name Sal Paradise. The idea for the book developed during the late 1940s t...
