[Kerouac's novels], taken together, exemplify a change of consciousness so subversive to prevailing American values and institutions and so attractive, at least within a decade, to millions of Americans that all defenders of the Establishment felt compelled to shout them out of existence. Kerouac's novels are more readily summarized than Ginsberg's poetry or the Beats' innovations in life styles, but all three manifest a rebellion against the Establishment—the goals and habits of middle-class America…. (p. 435)

On the Road, written in 1951 concerning events of the preceding four years, superficially appears to be much as the book's cover brazenly proclaims, a "wild Odyssey of two dropouts who swing across America wrecking and rioting—making it with sex, jazz, and drink as they Make the Scene."… It all seemed to be an unrestrained Whitmanesque celebration of the open road, that peculiarly American joy in moving for its own sake: "I...