On the Road

Both novels feature an enchanted narrator obsessed with a charismatic figure who embodies the American Dream — Gatsby through wealth, Dean through motion

The Lost Generation's road novel — Jake Barnes and his friends wander postwar Europe with the same restlessness and disillusionment, a generation earlier

The Beat Generation's other foundational text — Ginsberg's verse does in poetry what Kerouac does in prose, with the same energy, the same rage, the same jazz

The darkest corner of the Beat triangle — Burroughs (Old Bull Lee) takes the Beat rejection of convention to its logical extreme: total dissolution

Kerouac's companion piece — same restlessness, but turned toward Buddhism and mountain solitude instead of highways and jazz clubs

The next generation's road novel — Thompson picks up where Kerouac left off, but the ecstasy has curdled into paranoia and the American Dream is explicitly dead