September 5, 1957: "On the Road" Is Published

September 5, 1957: On the Road is published by Viking Press, the 2nd novel by Jack Kerouac. It becomes the defining novel of what became known as the Beat Generation.

In an appearance on The Steve Allen Show in 1959, Kerouac admitted that it had taken him 3 weeks of constant typing to produce the 320-page book, but that the experiences contained therein, mostly travels to find, and then travels with, his friend Neal Cassady, lasted 7 years. It wasn't that long, but it was 3 years.

A big misconception about the Beats is that they were Fifties exemplars, cultural touchstones. Far from it. Allen Ginsberg, the leading poet of the movement (although Kerouac did also write poetry), didn't publish Howl and Other Poems until 1956. Kerouac had published his 1st novel, The Town and the City, in 1950, but it was barely noticed at the time. Mainly because it wasn't very good, by his own admission, and it isn't exactly typical of his later style. Even the name was different: He was listed on the cover as "John Kerouac." He was never called by the English name "John": He was the French "Jean" to his family, and the nickname "Jack" to his friends. His magnum opus, On the Road, came out when the decade was 77 percent over.

Moreover, On the Road takes place between 1947 and 1950, the Harry Truman and Joe DiMaggio years, not the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Mickey Mantle years. A generation later, the film Easy Rider would premiere, and the words on its poster could easily have been applied to Kerouac's time on the road: "A man went looking for America... and couldn't find it anywhere."

As an article on Cracked.com put it, Kerouac wasn't even writing about the same time period. It would be like the ravers of the late 1980s and early 1990s using a book about Studio 54 as their template for life -- or conservatives today looking back with fondness on George W. Bush's Administration for the way to approach life, domestic politics and foreign policy.

And the Beatnik copycats of the late 1950s and the Hippies of the 1960s missed the point of the Beats. They were essentially embracing a lifestyle that the Beats themselves had realized was pointless. Even their escapes provided only short-term respite from American life.

And while Ginsberg, Cassady, and the Beats' San Francisco ally Lawrence Ferlinghetti accepted the copycats, and the subsequent Hippies, as kindred spirits, Kerouac sure didn't. As he got older, his innate Catholicism and conservatism kicked in, and he treated the copycats as poseurs. He lived long enough to see the rise of the Hippies, and he was as repulsed by them as any Catholic (or Protestant) conservative. By the time he died due to the excesses of his drinking at the end of the 1960s, Kerouac was only 47, but he was in full "Get off my lawn, you filthy kids!" mode.

As the term "Beatnik" implies, they were, at best, widely mocked; at worst, hated, for their drug use, their apparent tendency toward beards, their leftward leanings, their drug use, their religious beliefs, and their sexual habits.

Most of the major writers didn't have beards, except Ginsberg by the late Fifties. Of the big names among the Beats, only Ginsberg was an out-and-out Communist. Drugs? Mainly marijuana, but Ginsberg would later advocate LSD, and Burroughs was hooked on heroin and wrote a memoir titled Junky. Religion? The Catholic Kerouac and the Jewish Ginsberg both embraced, and wrote about, Buddhism, but Kerouac went back to The Church. Sex? Kerouac and Cassady were always writing about the women they slept with. Ginsberg was one of the few openly gay celebrities of the time, and Burroughs would screw anything that moved, male or female.

The Beats were heavily influenced by jazz, especially the bebop of the post-World War II years, the late 1940s, led by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. It's often pointed out that Parker died, as a result of years of substance abuse, on March 12, 1955, Kerouac's 33rd birthday, and this bothered Kerouac a lot. He would die from alcohol-related causes on October 21, 1969, Gillespie's 52nd birthday. A morbid coincidence.

Because of Kerouac's stream-of-consciousness writing style, the book was often considered "unfilmable." The film rights were passed around for decades. Finally, in 2012, a film version premiered. Sam Riley played Sal Paradise, the name Kerouac gave himself in the novel. Garrett Hedlund played Dean Moriarty, the analogue for Cassady. And Kristen Stewart played Mary Lou, based on Lu Anne Henderson, Cassady's girlfriend at the time.

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September 5, 1957 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-2 at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees tied the game with 2 runs in the bottom of the 8th, and Bob Grim, pitching in relief of Bob Turley, won it with a home run in the bottom of the 9th.

* The New York Giants lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-2 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Willie Mays went 1-for-5. Roberto Clemente went 2-for-5.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-1 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Carl Furillo had 3 hits, although the rest of the Dodgers only got 3 between them. But it was enough, as Carl Erskine outpitched Robin Roberts.

* The Washington Senators beat the Baltimore Orioles, 3-0 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Chuck Stobbs pitched a 3-hit shutout. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-3.

* The Cincinnati Redlegs (as the Reds were known from 1954 to 1958) beat the Chicago Cubs, 4-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Frank Robinson hit a home run. Ernie Banks went 2-for-4.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Braves, 10-1 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. The Cards achieved this despite Stan Musial not playing. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4.

* The Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Indians, the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Athletics were not scheduled to play.