Off the Road: Alternative Views of Rebellion, Resistance and 'The Beats'

Abstract

In the summer of 1990, I drove to western France with my two young children. 'Born to run', our favourite Springsteen track, was blasting out and Carolyn Cassady's (1990) book Off the road was in my luggage among the piles of clothes, towels, toys and other belongings that seemed essential at the time to displace and recreate home in a French gite. As I read Cassady's recollections of life with the beats, in snatched moments between dealing with my children's demands for time, attention, ice creams and coke, I remembered the shock of empathy and sympathy I felt with her bittersweet recollections of staying at home waiting for her men to return. In one sense, I was away from home that summer but I seemed to have brought all the responsibilities along with me. The book stayed in my mind for the next couple of years but when Cresswell's (1993) article on mobility as resistance was published I decided to re-read both Kerouac (1991/1957) On the road and Cassady's Off the road. This paper is the result of my reactions to both books. It is not a research-based

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