More Important Than The Bible?

That's just what trash friend, Subdonkey & SpringsCultureCast producer, author, and musician Klayton Elliot Kendall asks about Kerouac's On The Road, 50 years after its publication...



Tomorrow we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Kerouac's On the Road, an event that marked a radical paradigm shift not only in American literature, but Western culture in general. This shift cannot be overstated. Before On the Road, the single most important book in the western hemisphere was the Bible, as it had been for over 1,500 years, ever since the canonization of the books of the Old and New Testaments in the fourth century AD. The new American secularism that we take for granted today -- with its hedonistic motto of "Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll!" -- began with the Baby Boomers, who were the first real benefactors of a modern, technological world. Their guidebook of choice, their Bible, was On the Road. No other book came close in terms of influence and popularity. It's difficult, perhaps impossible, to imagine blue jeans, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, the student revolts of '68, Woodstock, mountains of cocaine, the Sex Pistols, MTV, Jenna Jameson, the Internet, iPhones ... everything that separates us from the superstitious, racist, xenophobic patriarchs of American culture who landed on Plymouth rock in 1620 (and whose disciples still walk among us today), without On the Road on every literate American's bookshelf. The book has inspired countless millions to live life a little differently: with more courage and less hate. I first encountered On the Road as an 18-year-old college freshman, and its kinetic verbal ferocity has inspired me to GO GO GO ever since. I can say, without a doubt, that Kerouac's vision of America, fairytale or not, is the vision I hold most dear, even against the onslaught of consumer sewage that flows unabated from the Wal-Mart and McDonald's on every motherfucking street corner in our godforsaken nation.(NEWSPEAKblog.com)