"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac

The manifesto of the Beat Generation, "On the Road" by the French Canadian Jack Kerouac is one amazing book. If you haven't read anything from the modern/post-modern genre, this would probably be a good book to start with. It describes four trips across the USA and Mexico taken by "Salvatore", the main protagonist, a surrogate for the author himself who based the book solely on his own personal experience and the voluminous notebooks which he always carried with him. Sal lives in NYC and his "life on the road" starts when Dean Moriarty enters his life. Dean is what would become the typical Anti-Hero of the age. He drinks, he smokes, he takes any drug he could get his hands on, he is unfaithful to his friends and lover, never kept a steady job and is in a constant flux.

Sal and Dean go to San Francisco, stopping at Denver, both of which cities would become their common starting and ending points. Eventually all trips finish back in NYC, where Sal lives permanently and Dean sometimes. Sal says that when spring arrives in NYC he gets the urge to go somewhere, and when Dean is around, there is always somewhere to go, even if it is nowhere. The second trip goes along the Midwest and includes driving a rich-man's car through the entire country up to Chicago. The third and fourth trips go all the way to Mexico city and many cities in Mexico, where Sal describes the bordellos, the hookers, the life of the people, the atmosphere, etc.

However, the main idea of the book is that true art is like Jazz, whether it is music or the written word. It is living, evolving, unclean, unfinished but always touching and beautiful. Kerouac stated that he tried to write his books as Jazz music is written, spontaneous, with lots of improvisation, and for the most part it works great, however some parts read like a very cursory travel reportage. Although I am not the greatest fan of this writing style, this cult-status book definitely deserves a reading and is refreshing and original.