ABSTRACT
The most familiar countercultural novel of the era, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, presents the most complex set of comparisons, as its text exists in both the published version and the earlier “scroll” version of the manuscript; and elements of both are evident in the only intermittently successful cinematic adaptation. Here the comparison with Walter Salles’ film reveals the extent to which the novel’s religious dimension, organized around the themes of motion and stasis, quantitative and qualitative conceptions of time, “enthusiasm,” and a quasi-Buddhist search for a mode of harmonious existence in the world, have been lost in the process of historical assimilation. The chapter also highlights the ironies created by the challenges of gender difference and the transformation undergone by the figure of the charismatic hero, as the book’s cyclical structure develops from a quest for a positively imagined divinity or father figure to a human-scaled but ultimately helpless compassion.
