I’m currently reading Kerouac’s On The Road which has long been a glaring omission from the books I’ve read. I have long felt that I had missed the boat not reading it as a teenager as it has a place as a teenage rite of passage. However it’s rapturous embrace of ‘the American night’ brings back memories of my own youth and although Dublin to Galway and back doesn’t quite match the continental scale of Kerouac’s peregrinations you make do with what you got.
He loses his job when the mine he works in is closed. He then goes for a drink with his father who gives him the keys to his Cadillac convertible, tells him to leave and heads into the pub toilet and shoots himself. Like the Rain Dogs in the song by late era Beat Poet Tom Waits, he's out on the street and the rain has washed away the scent of home.
