Jack Kerouac’s wild celebration of life

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, Jack Kerouac for short, born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, is one of the world-famous authors such as Joyce, Grass, Nabokov, from whose extensive work one title stands out that puts all others in the shade. That may sometimes be unfair, but that’s the way it is. Kerouac’s hit “On the Road” is one of the best known and most widely read books of the 20th century. Since 2010 we have had a new translation (by Ulrich Blumenbach), which is not only characterized by a solid, vital, selected colloquial German, but also by the fact that it is the unabridged, unedited original version, which only appeared in English in 2007. The old translation (still available under the title “Unterwegs”) is not recognizable in this version, the original version is a single monologue, a torrent of words without paragraphs, but not a lead desert, but rather a lead stream. It was created in April 1951, typed on continuous paper in 20 days. Here Kerouac comes pretty close to the demand he made in the “Evergreen Review” in 1959: “Compose wildly, undisciplined, pure! Write what rises from the depths of your heart! The crazier the better!”