Jack Kerouac App! (or "On the Road Again...")

[3113]

Say that three times fast....

There's a certain poetic justice in the fact that "On the Road" is one of Apple's top grossing book apps. Released on Saturday, the iPad app for Jack Kerouac's landmark novel -- featuring a variety of enriched content, including commentary, maps, audio recordings and other ephemera -- hit No. 4 four on Apple's list on Tuesday, ahead of Bible and T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland." That's a testament to the power of the digital project, but also to the novel, which has occupied a visionary place in the culture since it was first published in 1957.

The decision to bring out "On the Road" as an app has a lot to do with this iconic status, said Stephen Morrison, editor-in-chief of Penguin Books, reached this week by phone at his Manhattan office. "We were looking for a book with enough resonance," Morrison said, "as well as enough supplemental material from which we could learn how to curate a literary app."

The key word there, of course, is "learn," which is what all of us, publishers and writers and readers, must do now as the publishing industry increasingly comes to terms with the digital age. We need to learn how to use the digital space as a vessel, as a container, how to produce and interact with apps and electronic texts that feel like books yet also reflect the possibilities of technology.

"On the Road" aspires to all of this, functioning both as an e-book and also as a source of ancillary information. Open the app, and you'll find a home screen with several subject areas: "The Book," "The Author," "The Trip," "Publication" and "The Beats."

Full story here.
Thoughts? Feelings? Opinions? Beat Poetry?

 

[trysail]

"It was remarkable how Dean could go mad and then suddenly continue with his soul- which I think is wrapped up in a fast car, a coast to reach, and a woman at the end of the road- calmly and sanely as though nothing had happened.

As a seaman I used to think of the waves rushing beneath the shell of the ship and the bottomless deeps thereunder- now I could feel the road some twenty inches beneath me, unfurling and flying and hissing at incredible speeds across the groaning continent with that mad Ahab at the wheel."

- Jack Kerouac
On The Road
Viking Critical Edition, New York, 1979


Oh, my, what a lovely piece of writing!
Road trip, anyone?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Another classic I've never read. Though from that excerpt, by golly I just might!

 

[3113]

Another classic I've never read. Though from that excerpt, by golly I just might!

Get the app!

 

[TE999]

I read 'On The Road' in college (didn't everybody?) and really liked it at the time. I wonder how I'd react to it today now that I'm older? I think I'd still like it.

 

[trysail]

My hard copy is forever. No charging or batteries are or will ever be required. Notes, annotations and highlights are permanent. It is easily transportable and is completely insensitive to ambient environmental conditions. I always know exactly where the book can be found; it's on the shelf right next to Gerald Nicosia's acclaimed Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac. No additional payments will ever be necessary. No upgrades will be required; there will be no new file types. There will be no obsolescence. My copy is easily lent to trustworthy friends and will be passed on to my heirs.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm a Kerouac fanatic, and in my opinion, Road is one of his weaker books. I'm old enough to remember when it came out, and I remember the huge shock it had.

Young people bent on kicks! Acting irresponsibly! Smoking marijuana and drinking cheap wine! Casual unmarried sex! Jazz music!

I wasn't old enough to do any of that stuff at the time (aside from the music), but they'd already been on my to-do list for a pretty long time, and on the list of all my friends, so there was nothing shocking in there to us. I already considered myself a beat.

What Kerouac did teach me was how great prose could turn everyday life into art. I didn't know what "art" was at the time, but I knew his writing was thrilling and that he was talking about things I understood. He was a huge influence on me, and even today my sentences are too long and breathless.

He's the most musical writer I've ever read. I didn't realize that till we got some recordings of him reading his work, and then the sky opened up. We'd listen to him reading just like we'd listen to music, drunk or stoned, everyone getting quiet at the good parts. I still listen to him, often in the car. He's not a wise writer or very deep, but his heart and soul show in his prose. He always wanted to be a jazz musician and wanted his writing to have the same feel, and I think he came pretty close.

The cool thing about Road is that it supposedly embodied Kerouac's ideas of "spontaneous bop prosody." It was written in like 15 days on one continuous roll of paper without edits or corrections, just as if came out. Or that's what he claimed. After his death they found sheet after sheet of revisions and rewrites where he carefully reworked passages to make them sound more spontaneous.

Still, a hell of a writer, and a tragic, sad life.

 

[3113]

Young people bent on kicks! Acting irresponsibly! Smoking marijuana and drinking cheap wine! Casual unmarried sex! Jazz music!

I wasn't old enough to do any of that stuff at the time (aside from the music), but they'd already been on my to-do list for a pretty long time, and on the list of all my friends

I wonder if that list is on the app?