Thursday 5th September 1957
The New York Times writer Gilbert Millstein gave a rave review to “On the Road,” the second novel (hardly anyone had read the first) by a 35-year-old Columbia dropout named Jack Kerouac. “Jack went to bed obscure,” Kerouac’s girlfriend told a reporter, “and woke up famous.” “On the Road” is an autobiographical novel about a series of cross-country automobile trips that Kerouac made between 1947 and 1950, both by himself and with his friend Neal Cassady.