Jack Kerouac "On the Road" 50th Anniversary and its Valley Connection
This month is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." Not only is this one of the greatest novels ever published, it has an impressive Central California Valley connection. Here's an excerpt from chapter 12:
"Tracy is a railroad town; brakemen eat surly meals in diners by the tracks. Trains howl away across the valley. The sun goes down long and red. All the magic names of the valley unrolled--Manteca, Madera, all the rest. Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries. I struck my head out the window and took deep breaths of the fragrant air. It was the most beautiful of all moments. The madman was a brakeman with the Southern Pacific and he lived in Fresno; his father was also a brakeman. He lost his toe in the Oakland yards, switching, I didn't quite understand how. He drove me into buzzing Fresno and let me off by the south side of town. I went for a quick Coke in a little grocery by the tracks, and here came a melancholy Armenian youth along the red boxcars, and just at that moment a locomotive howled, and I said to myself, Yes, yes, Saroyan's town."
The commemorations for the book are already starting. Locally, CSUF radio station KFSR 90.7 FM will be airing an episode of A Prairie Home Companion that will be paying homage to Kerouac and books in general. You can catch it live today at 5 p.m. or noon tomorrow. You can also tune in via audio stream via their Web site.
If you have a few minutes, the New York Times Book Review blog (called Paper Cuts) posted an amazing YouTube clip of Kerouac reading from "On the Road" in 1959.
It can take a few moments to load, but it's well worth the wait.
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~C
Co-author of REMEMBERING CESAR: THE LEGACY OF CESAR CHAVEZ
The first book to be endorsed by the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation
Available through Amazon, your local bookseller, or direct from the publisher at Quill Driver Books, 1-800-497-4909. ISBN 1884956114
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