Teaching Kerouac: On the Road

In 1957, Kerouac’s experimental novel "On the Road" became a surprise best seller. The mad adventures of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise offered white middle class readers the release of freedom and sex found, as Kerouac imagined, in the black, Latino, poor, and bohemian fringes of American society. What is the “madness” that permeates the novel?