"My writing is a teaching," Kerouac noted in his journal, and this was the point, even if readers didn't get it at first. "One of the greatest incentives of the writer is the long business of getting his teachings out and accepted." He was twenty-six when he started On the Road, shaking off a brief failed marriage and the dath of his father, embarking on a new life. The new book would teach the way. To prepare he wrote down eleven "true thoughts" about himself, many of them vanities he hoped to overcome along his characters' travels. "I'm ready to grow up if they'll let me," he wrote. The product of his labors, he was sure, would be a "powerful and singularly gloomy book...but good." In due course the narrator learns and dispenses many lessons, often in the form of parables and revelations, providing a guide to alternative adulthood: What would Jack do? Contrary to its rebel rep, On the Road is not about being Peter Pan; it is about becoming an adult. - from Why Kerouac Matters Submit a Review
