Hey very cool—thanks!

Yeah the "biggest fast food" chains are going to all be pretty similar. I'd be curious about the slightly more regional chains--Jack in the Box, Waffle House, Hardees v. Carl's Jr, Sonic. Is Chik-Fil-A everywhere now?

Also, he's obviously pretty awful to women even through Kerouac's admiring lens, and I seem to recall him coming off as pretty creepy too.

Rachel Cusk's "Outline" series is three books and the first was published in chunks in the Paris Review over a year, so I read that one slow, and then read the second one flying to Arkansas and then read it again on the way home. Her prose is just soooo smooth.

I mean, it's lasted this long (revered by boomers, Xers and some Millennials at least), but I agree with you, it's kind of a mystery as to why.

I wonder if the cultural lessons it tries to impart are just so ubiquitous that we don't need it (what's more middle class than 'finding your place' or whatever the hell the message of this book is?).

Neal Cassidy (on whom Dean Moriarty was based) shows up in Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, driving Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters around. He seemed pretty cracked by then and the hippies seem to revere him as a cultural object, but also sort of fear him (as I recall. Its been a minute since I read it).