Just finished Kerouac on BA2027. Aren’t west-bound transatlantic flights a great place to read – 90% of the book in the one sitting. I guess I need to understand a little of the circumstances under which it was written – one drug induced sitting ? – published 1955 about 1947 to 1949 period in which the author refers to writing and successfully publishing a first work.
The music and the locations are seductive; the drink, drugs, driving and women plain wild. A great east-west anthroplogical thread in there – the fellahin cultures, the Tao. (We know Pirsig was influenced by Kerouac. He would have read on-the-road immediately prior to his “teaching quality” episodes.)
What did Sal and Dean mean, headed for Times Square in 1948 driving through the tunnel from Jersey, by “We are a bunch of Arabs going to blow up New York” ? Intriguing.