Crazy Literary Facts: Jack Kerouac on the Road--Sort Of

Jeevan Sivasubramaniam Posted by Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, Managing Director, Editorial, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.



With a bestselling book about road trips (aptly named On the Road), you would think that Beat-era superstar Jack Kerouac would be an obsessive driver, always yearning for the open road, but you'd be wrong. The truth is that Jack Kerouac didn't know how to drive.

First moving to NYC for boarding school and then attending Columbia, he never had use for a car and never learned. On all his travels up and down the nation from north to south, Kerouac never once took the wheel and instead relied on public transport or his buddy Neal Cassady.