On the road again with Jack Kerouac
By Christopher Reynolds
Los Angeles Times
Jack Kerouac slept where?
Fifty years ago this month, the Beat Generation writer's novel "On the Road" hit bookstores, its story told in breathless, jazz-inflected cadences, its plot lifted from the author's life. The plot follows two friends and their assorted pals on four cross-country road trips, their adventures packed with enough fast chatter to make Aaron Sorkin's head spin, enough drink and drugs and casual sex to satisfy a platoon of rock stars, enough discovery and enthusiasm and motion and exclamation points and careening overloaded sentences to give any reader a pang of wanderlust.
But have you looked at those pages lately? If you do and you're older than 30, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty (Kerouac's names for himself and his mercurial friend Neal Cassady) might seem more desperate and doomed than you remember. And the North America they're exploring might seem far away indeed. (For details, consult the blog www.littourature.blogspot.com.)
As you check this 21st-century charting of Sal's travels, remember that it was 1948 and 1949 when Kerouac and Cassady made the trips that dominate "On the Road," 1951 when Kerouac wrote the bulk of the book and 1957 when Viking published it. Cassady died at 41 in 1968, Kerouac at 47 in 1969. In both deaths, alcohol was implicated.
As for the road then and the road now:
Now, Greyhound and its parent company have been through bankruptcy twice in the past 20 years. The interstate highway system has grown to more than 45,000 miles, allowing for faster trips and less local color. There are more than 30,000 McDonald's locations and 1,384 Holiday Inns worldwide. There's still one City Lights, now 54 years old, on Columbus Avenue, still run by Ferlinghetti.
Now, Hector's is no more. Birdland closed in 1965 (although another club with that name does business now on West 44th Street ). Riker's is gone too. (But the company behind that chain, Restaurant Associates Corp., has endured and evolved.)
Now, the Chicago YMCA doesn't accept short-term overnight guests and hasn't for at least a decade, a spokeswoman says. The YMCA's Lawson House, which goes back to 1931 in central Chicago, houses about 600 residents, most of them working poor, formerly homeless and the mentally ill, who pay $375 a month and up.
Now, Cheyenne still throws its annual party, but it's called Frontier Days. This year's bill in July included a rodeo, art and air shows, pancake breakfasts, a carnival and concerts by Bon Jovi and Reba McEntire. The old bus station has been leveled, and the old train depot next door is a museum.
Now, Larimer and LoDo have been renovated. The Denargo Market, a 29-acre area north of downtown, has been proposed for redevelopment. In Central City, the 1878 opera house has four productions every summer. The Windsor was leveled in 1959. Meanwhile, a Denver developer has put up Jack Kerouac Lofts (60 units on Huron Street near Union Station, most priced at $300,000 to $400,000).
Now, one Clifton's Cafeteria remains, the Brookdale at 648 S. Broadway, and it did have a 20-foot waterfall, along with a faux redwood forest and chapel that are still there. But Sal was probably talking about another Clifton's — the late, lamented Pacific Seas at 618 S. Olive St., which had 12 waterfalls and all manner of Polynesian flourishes. It closed in June 1960.
Sal never mentions a name for that eatery, but it sounds a lot like Sanborns' La Casa de los Azulejos, a city landmark (and cafeteria and department store) that dates to the 16th century. Famed for its tile work and murals, the building has included a restaurant since about 1919.
Now, Kerouac's original 120-foot-long typescript scroll for the book is on tour, having sold at auction in 2001 for $2.4 million.
Lately, rare-book dealers have been offering first-edition copies of "On the Road" for as much as $8,000. You sometimes can buy an Edsel for less.
