Naked Lunch

Time for Jack Kerouac to hit the road

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the last pages of Naked Lunch at dawn looking for an angry fix of good literature, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection between plot and prose, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up reading Kaddish, who bared their brains to the delights of On the Road in the pursuit of just a fraction of the “angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated.” Everyone knows the Beats: from Jack Kerouac to William Burroughs to Allen Ginsberg, their influence has been undeniable, if not always delightful. And on March 12, their lodestar, Jack Kerouac would have been 100 years old.

kerouac