‘On the Road’: An Illustrated Scroll

Illustrator: Paul Rogers
from On The Road: Illustrated Scroll

What do you get when you blend conformity, blind faith, directionless people and a decadent society? There's no prize for the correct answer. And no guessing.

You get the subculture of the Beat Generation.

One of the inimitable brushes that painted this landscape of subculture was the novel On the Road, written by Jack Kerouac, who had as well coined the term 'beat'.

The American literature is half empty without the Kerouac company; a couple of other beatniks included Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs—all of them are legends on their own.

The Beatniks need no introduction; but just in case, you can start with The Dharma Bums, Howl, America and Naked Lunch. They created a universe, independent of the tides and waves of the United States during the 40s and 50s, when they were basking on the glory of their revolution.

"The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities," Amiri Baraka puts it succinctly, "who came to the conclusion that society sucked."

Jack Kerouac is on a frantic search for meaning and belonging in On the Road. Millions of readers and critics have been dissecting each word of this novel, which is divided into five parts. Paul Roger, a designer, has illustrated every page of this novel. Visit his website for more illustrations.

The images are posted with permission from
Paul Rogers, On The Road: Illustrated Scroll

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds." 
-- Jack  Kerouac     On the Road     Part 1 Ch. 3

Read: Jack Kerouac’s List of 30 Beliefs and Techniques for Writing and Life