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It would be redundant to return to the contribution of Jack Kérouac's work to the American counterculture of the 60s. On the Road is the matrix. The author's figure is more ambivalent, if not frankly controversial; he was an individualist, not a leader. Less openly autobiographical, The Dharma Bums, presented as a novel, remains a work à clef; it is still about Jack and his knowledge that it is about. There is still talk of travel, but this is no longer the ultimate affirmation of freedom from all contingent attachments; it is only a means for a quest that aims to be more spiritual. We have the right to ask questions, even to raise objections. Indeed, our acolytes understand how to live, share with people in need, and put their bodies to the test to achieve spiritual awakening. We attack oriental maxims advocating wisdom and the emptiness of all attachment; we respect decorum and aesthetics to match. But aside from that, we drink immoderately; we smoke willingly; we consume meat with relish; we copulate when we want, and we free-ride when necessary. So isn't all this transcendentalist and Buddhist phraseology reduced to nonsense, to claptrap, to chimeras more likely to justify specific subsidence in a marginal way of life than to be the actual manifestation of an ardent need for absolute?
If you manage to ignore all this untimely spiritualism, what paradoxically emerges from Jack Kérouac's style is a concern for authenticity, simplicity, and a certain liveliness. But he is the man of work. With On the Road, everything has been said and consumed. The rest is just pleasant variation. That doesn't prevent us from always being tempted to return for a spin by repurchasing one of his novels.