On the Road by Jack Kerouac

At Headlines, World Book Day holds a special place in our hearts because telling great stories is what we’re passionate about.  

This year, we asked the team to tell us about their favourite book, poem or piece of writing. From sports gossip to seminal graphic novels – we’ve got eclectic taste! 

Read on ... and you never know, you might find your next book suggestion.

Peter Bennett – Head of Editorial 

What’s your favourite book?

I don’t think that I have one – definitive – favourite book. The first ones that come to mind are Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies. But there’s one book that I’ve had a very complicated relationship with ever since I first read it … Jack Kerouc’s On the Road.

What makes On the Road so special to you? 

For my gap year, I’d planned a great American adventure – driving Route 66 in its entirety. I knew that I had to read On the Road. The book navigated and mirrored so much of what I was feeling at the time; rejecting the ‘norm’, yearning for an adventure, desperate to feel like an individual, but also desperate to fit in … and girls. I beat my copy of the book, reading it from cover to cover at every pit stop, diner and motel.

What drew you in initially? 

The style of the book was just inherently cool. I’d never read any writing like it before. And the amoral approach of the protagonists spoke to me; for the first time in my life I was truly independent of any institution; there was no one to tell me what I could or couldn’t do. And to top it all, I got to view Kerouac’s mythical original manuscript which he banged out on his typewriter in three weeks fueled by nothing but coffee and benzedrine at a museum in Illinois. 

What does it make you think or feel? 

On the Road is inextricably linked to my own American adventure, something that I had built up as a life-changing awakening. I was desperate to like the book and I really did love it at the time. Since then, I’ve tried a few times to recapture my love of the book but something is missing … the drinking, drugs, cheating and frenetic writing style no longer resonate like they did. But for a three-month period, On the Road meant the world to me.