On the Road

This is a first-person fictional narrative of a young person going all over America (and even Mexico). It is set in the 50s and would NEVER be popular today because of how denigrating the main characters are to women. These are people who lead lives of quiet desperation. I did not care for it, but I soldiered through it. It is on almost every "must read list" I have ever seen. So, for that reason, I am glad to finally have my curiosity satisfied. must-read

Here is a review on Amazon:

Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that “set them free”. Based on Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose four cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon, and imbued with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up. This edition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of the novel in 1957 and will be a must-have for any literature lover.

©1955, 1957 John Sampas, Literary Representative, the Estate of Stella Sampas Kerouac (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Within the catalog of books to read before you die, there is a very short list of books to read between the ages of fifteen and twenty, and On the Road is certainly near its top. Jack Kerouac’s novel has qualities that transcend its youthful appeal, but none measures up to the intoxication it can deliver to a teenaged reader with a taste for the heady brew of romanticism, adventure, and unfettered selfhood an improvised road trip promises.