An authentic work of art . . . the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is. -
Gilbert Millstein, The New York Times
On the Road has the kind of drive that blasts through to a large public. . . . What makes the novel really important, what gives it that drive is a genuine new, engaging and exciting prose style. . . . What keeps the book going is the power and beauty of the writing. -
Kenneth Rexroth, San Francisco ChronicleA highly euphoric and intensely readable story about a group of wandering young hedonists who cross the country in endless search of kicks. -
Leonard Feather, Downbeat On the Road is perhaps the supreme American romance . . . a mystical and poignant reminder of lost youth, and those sublime years when everyone feels immortal. -The Guardian, The 100 Best Novels
[On the Road] changed my life like it changed everyone else's . . . It speeds by like a freight train . . . You grabbed ahold of the train, hopped on and went along with him, hanging on for dear life. -Bob Dylan
Kerouac turned up the temperature in American letters, and it's never gone down since. -John Updike
[On the Road] showed me that you could do things that weren't sypposed to be done. Suddenly, I realized I wasn't the only one to think I was a nut because I had strange thoughts. Finally, here was somebody telling the truth. -David Bowie
If [Kerouac] hadn't written On the Road, The Doors would have never existed . . . that sense of freedom, spirituality, and intellectuality-that's what I wanted in my own work. -Ray Manzarek
My teenage years were soaked in Kerouac. I wanted to go on a road trip with Neal Cassady. The expanse of the American West became implanted in my imagination. -Colum McCann
On the Road, The Dharma Bums . . . That was my starting point, the Beats putting poetry-spoken word-and jazz together. -Van Morrison
