Wrote beautiful sentences but had few ideas and weak characters. Dean Moriarty is insufferable. Still, everyone should read Big Sur.

Kerouac is not for everybody,but what great author is? He really captures the times and adventures,passions and pitfalls of his experience.His descriptions are unparalelled.He has the ability to take you there,if you care to go.I like the wild ride and the fast storms of ideas he presents.

there's no reason to believe in god when you have Jack Kerouac

I still dont get why he has this legendary status. If you need to try him, 'On the road' is all you need bother with. Overrated.

A typist, not a writer, who appeals to the addled sensitivities of developmentally delayed pseudo-intellectuals who believe that they have discovered wisdom in his wretched nonsense. A fraud who can scarcely write a cogent sentence, and whose literary abilities would have been better suited to writing telephone books.

Brilliant. On The Road is great and is Big Sur and The Subterraneans. If you haven't read him, you haven't lived.

The voice of the beat generation, Jack Kerouac is one of my favorite authors. I love On The Road, Big Sur, Dharma Bums, and Desolation Angels, but I think that his best novels are those in which he speaks of his childhood such as The Town And The City, Visions of Gerard, and Maggie Cassidy. He seems to capture the essence of life in these novels and gives the reader a good sense of what it was like growing up during the second World War as well as pre and post war America. The man was brilliant.

best EVER!!! no one is better!

There is no better author to give you a feel of what beatnik poetry is all about. The first time I read "On the Road," I was a little too young to understand it, but on a second read a few years later, it was much easier to see why the work is so fantastic. It's one of those books that you can't just read once and take it all in. It inspired me to want to do it all-- to set out 'on the road' and just see where life takes me.

Kerouac is a very descriptive and imaginative writer - and I know that from just reading 'On The Road'. I have to admit that I have to read the book more than once to soak in everything that he's writing about. Fantastic modern American Literature.

Kerouac helped change American society forever. His writings inspired a generation in the 1960's. Everyone should read this guy's work. Plastic dynamo author.

If anyone has the interest to get a feel of beatnik poetry, Jack Kerouac is the person to start with. He has a distinctive rythym and style which defined the time. Some of his language is crass yet honest, making it all the more worth your while to not only read but experience.

On the Road blew me away when I first read it in high school, so I went on to try Big Sur and Dharma Bums. Neither of those two books approached the brilliance of On the Road, but so what? Even if an author only writes one great book, he can still make a huge impact (e.g., Catcher in the Rye by Salinger and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Kesey). On the Road was like nothing I'd ever read, and it really hit me. It made me want to travel, to write, to do and appreciate everything all at once... The stereotypical Beat bug. But On the Road was more than just the story of a particular generation or way of life at a particular time. Kerouac was an extremely talented writer who told a story that still resonates with us 50 years later. He was a tortured, often confused, often alienated, alcoholic who couldn't handle success and veered wildly between elation and misery. But he somehow managed to turn all of that into literature with lasting value.

On the Road is a good book but I really want to read it again. I think it might be better the second time around. I think I may have missed a lot of what he was saying but it definately gave me the traveling bug.

I have recently read On the Road and I finally understand all the fuss about Kerouac. The characters remain vivid and I feel that seeing Neal standing on the street under the dull lights as Sal drives off in the comfort of a wife and tickets to a show is a memory of my own. This is thanks to Kerouac who introoduces the reader to friends in three dimensions.

On the Road is outstanding, but none of his other works really grabbed me in the same way.

Kerouac displays a new vision for great, almost epic, storytelling. He is "A Western Kinsman of the sun". On the Road is a MUST READ.

"That's not writing. It's typing."