![]() Their frantic reunions are curiously reminiscent of lodge and business conventions, with the same shouts of fellowship, hard drinking, furtive attempts at sexual dalliance-and, after a few days, the same boredom. Dean and Sal and their other buddies-Carlo Marx, the frenzied poet Ed Dunkel, an amiable cipher Remi Boncoeur, who has the second loudest laugh in San Francisco-are forever racing cross-country to meet one another. The book’s protagonist is Dean Moriarty (“a sideburned hero of the snowy West”), who has spent a third of his waking time in poolrooms, a third in jail, a third in public libraries, and is always shouting “Yes, yes, yes!” to every experience. The story is set in the late 1940s, told in the first person by Sal Paradise, a budding writer given to ecstasies about America, hot jazz, the meaning of life, and marijuana. As TIME’s then explained, the plot was an opportunity for Kerouac to expound upon a new set of moral guidelines for young Americans: ![]()
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