Furtherquotes: 'On the Road' at 50

Just after midnight, 50 years ago, Jack Kerouac and his girlfriend Joyce went out to buy a first edition of The New York Times to read its review of On the Road, his second novel.

It has been called the most famous book review in the paper's history. With its publication, Kerouac, who arrived in town on a borrowed Greyhound bus fare, was catapulted to instant literary fame. He would never recover.

The Times' reviewer, Gilbert Millstein, wrote that "There are sections of 'On the Road' in which the writing is of a beauty almost breathtaking."

Mr Millstein's original review is available on the Times' website as an image file. But perhaps Sal Paradise himself deserves a word on this momentous anniversary:

I was standing on the hot road underneath an arc-lamp with the summer moths smashing into it when I heard the sound of footsteps from the darkness beyond, and lo, a tall old man with flowing white hair came clomping by with a pack on his back, and when he saw me as he passed, he said, "Go moan for man," and clomped on back to his dark. Did this mean that I should at last go on my pilgrimage on foot on the dark roads around America?

I'm going to say "Yes".