In ON THE ROAD, Sal and his best friend Dean live for the same carefree excitement in the `50s as is often depicted today in TV beer commercials. The two of them, along with new and old friends, seek to enjoy life going across the country, before any family obligations or responsibilities really catch up with them.

Jack Kerouac, or Sal, the narrater, might argue that through his continuous traveling, with parties at most every stop, he was gathering subject matter for the novel he hoped to have published someday. He wanted to "work" and have fun at the same time, even if it meant living on a shoestring.

But Dean was really the protagonist of the book, and all his mischievous exploits were difficult for Sal to keep up with. Yet Kerouac claimed their seven years together, off and on the road, only took him three weeks to write as a book, a book which openly exposed the growing disillusionment of the "beat generation".

A later novel about hitchhiking across country was Eighner's TRAVELS WITH LIZBETH, which was published in 1993. Lars Eighner meets the same type of people along the road as Kerouac did, but nearly 40 years have passed, and the beat generation theme must be altered to cover dumpsters and homelessness. And even though Eighner and Kerouac were both writing autobiographically, their values have also changed with the times.

For those of us who remember the '50s, reading ON THE ROAD will bring back memories, but not all of them pleasant. Kerouac captured the gut feelings of that generation, but as a Penguin publication, it deserved better editing. Also,the picture of Sal and Dean is effective, but the reader is never told which one is Jack.

Jack Kerouac was born in 1922, but his heavy drinking cut his life short, and he died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven.