on the road

i'm posting the end of the first chapter in jack kerouac's on the road to celebrate the begining of a new year. this autobiographical novel, chronicling the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across America, was published fifty years ago and established kerouac as the voice of the beat generation. i wish us all that somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to us:

''I was a young writer and I wanted to take off.
Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.''