: Two friends traveling around America and Mexico are filled with alcohol, drugs, sex and jazz. And this road is like a life that never ends.
The novel is autobiographical and consists of five parts. Each part is divided into fragments. The narration is conducted on behalf of Sala Paradise.
Part one
The author recalls meeting and friendship with Dean Moriarty. It was "the period of my life, which can be called life on the road" - this is how he describes the events of those years.
Dean - “a slender, blue-eyed, with a genuine Oklahoma reprimand, a hero of the snowy West, growing pots” - is looking for a mentor in writing. Sal is delighted with a new acquaintance. Mutual sympathy grows into friendship.
He decides to visit a new friend in order to “get to know Dean”, in the manner of which he hears “the voices of old comrades and brothers under the bridge, among motorcycles, in curtained yards”. Sal sees in Dean "a wild, positive outburst of American delight; it was the West, the west wind, the ode to the Plains. ” He is struck by Dean's attitude to life - for example, "he stole cars only because he loved to ride."
All of Sal’s then friends were “intellectuals,” and Dean lived at speed and “raced within society, longing for bread and love.” He was indifferent to everything, he lived by the principle "while I can get a girl with something between my legs" - the rest does not matter. Such was the “share under the sun" of this hero, and for the author he is a "Western relative of the sun."
Sal decides to go to the West Coast. On the road, he meets different vagabonds and fellow travelers, “sets out on hikes through bars,” and sleeps at train stations.
He calls in to Chad - “a slender blond with a shaman’s face” - and wants to find Dean, but to no avail. Later he meets him - he lives with two women and consumes benzenedrine with Carlo's friend. Dean is glad to see a friend. They go "to the girls" and get drunk.
Continuing on his way, Sal reaches a friend Remy. There he works as a security guard, but drunk he hangs the American flag “upside down”. He is being fired. He and his friend lose the last money at the racetrack, and Sal returns home.
On the road, he meets the Mexican Terry. They bum around in search of work and drink soundly. Sal gets a job as a cotton picker, buys a tent in which he lives with Terry and her little son until the cold comes. Then he says goodbye to his beloved and goes on the road.
Upon arriving home, Sal learns of Dean's visit. He very regrets that they missed each other.
Part two
Sal finishes the book and writes Dean a letter. He says that he "is going to the East again" and comes with a friend Ed, whose girlfriend they throw on the road.
Relatives are shocked by the mad Dean. Despite this, Salom “was possessed by insanity, and the name of this insanity was Dean Moriarty. I was once again in the grip of the road. ”
They hit the road, stopping at different places. The road is accompanied by a plentiful drink, jazz and marijuana.
The whole company falls into Old Buffalo Lee, who "drove so many drugs into his blood that most of the day he could hold out only in his chair under a lamp lit from noon." Wearing glasses, a felt hat, a well-worn suit, thin, restrained and laconic, he is experimenting with drugs and “drug analysis”, holding chains ready for his own pacification.
Leaving Buffalo Lee's house, they get to the city.
In the city, friends hang around in jazz taverns, enjoying the “bop” and admiring the skill of “crazy musicians”. The author recalls that this "was the edge of the mainland, where everyone did not care about everything except the buzz."
Pissed off at each other, Sal and Dean part. They no longer hope to meet again and "everyone didn't give a damn about it."
Part three
The author tells about the events of the spring of 1949. He is lonely and wants to "settle down in the American outback and have a family."
Sal works in the wholesale fruit market and goes crazy with anguish - "There I was just dying in Denver." Mistress gives him a hundred dollars, and he embarks on a journey.
Dean lives with his second wife in a small house. They “should have had an unwanted second child,” but after a quarrel with his wife, he leaves home. He began to "do not care about anything (as before), but, besides, now he absolutely cared about everything in principle: that is, he was all one: he was part of the world and could not do anything about it."
The author suggests that Dean go to Italy, but he is distrustful of this undertaking.
They go to the bar, intending to find a mutual friend Remy. Dean grimaces, jokes and has fun, scaring others around with his crazy behavior. Sal admires that “thanks to his unimaginably huge series of sins, he becomes a moron, Blessed, by his fate - a saint.”
Intoxicated by the "ecstatic joy of pure being," they "go jabbing at jazz points." There, friends spend the whole night talking and drinking with saxophonists, pianists, jazzmen and hipsters.
And in the afternoon they "already rushed again to the East", spending the night in the shacks by seasonal hard workers. There, after "frantic drinking of beer," Dean steals a car, and the next morning the police are looking for him.
The road leads them to Ed's ranch, Dean's old friend. But he "lost faith in Dean ... looked at him with caution, when at all looked at him." Friends go on.
Dean crashes the car and "ragged and dirty, as if they lived only acrid," they hitchhike to the aunt's apartment.
At the party, Sal introduces a friend to Inez, who later gives birth to Dean's child.
The author sums up the trip: “Now Dean had only four babies and not a penny in his pocket, and he, as usual, had all the trouble, ecstasy and speed. Therefore, we never went to Italy. ”
Part four
The author wants to go on a trip, but Dean leads a quiet life - he works in the parking lot, lives with his wife, contented in the evenings with "a hookah loaded with grass and a deck of indecent cards." He refuses the trip, and Sal leaves without a friend.
He wants to go to Mexico, but he meets old friends - they spend "all week in lovely Denver bars, where waitresses wear trousers and cut through, bashfully and lovingly looking at you", listen to jazz and drink "in crazy black saloons."
Dean arrives unexpectedly, and Sal realizes that he is "crazy again." Friends travel south, languishing from the heat, increasing with every kilometer.
Once in Mexico, they see "the bottom and bastards of America, where all the heavy bastards descended, where all the lost had to go." But Dean is delighted - "in the end, the road still led us to a magical land."
Friends buy marijuana and end up in a brothel with young Mexicans. The heat intensifies, and they cannot sleep.
In the capital of Mexico, the author sees "thousands of hipsters in drooping straw hats and jackets with long lapels worn on a naked body." He describes in detail the life of the Mexican capital: “Coffee was brewed with rum and nutmeg. Mambo roared from everywhere. Hundreds of whores lined up the dark and narrow streets, and their mournful eyes glittered to us in the night ... wandering guitarists sang, and the old men at the corners blew pipes. Eateries were recognized by the sour stench, where they gave a bullet - a faceted glass of cactus juice, for only two cents. The streets lived all night. Beggars slept, wrapped in torn posters from the fences. Entire families they sat on the sidewalks, playing on small pipes and sniffing at themselves all night long. "Their bare heels stuck out, their dim candles burned, all of Mexico City was one huge bohemian camp."
At the end of the story, Sal loses consciousness due to dysentery. Through delirium, he sees how “the noble brave Dean stood with his old broken suitcase and looked at me from above."I did not know him anymore, and he knew this, and sympathized with me, and pulled the blanket over my shoulders."
Part five
Dean got home, got married again. Sal met his love - a girl “with clean and innocent sweet eyes that I always looked for, and for so long also. We persuaded to love each other madly. "
He writes Dean a letter, and he arrives, hoping for another joint journey. But Sal stays and sadly sees Dean "tattered, in a moth-eaten coat, which he brought especially for the eastern frosts, left alone." He never saw a friend again.
The novel ends with an expression of nostalgic gratitude to Dean Moriarty.
