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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Elle Hunt

The road well travelled: 100 years of Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac.
A symbol whose meaning is not uniformly understood … Jack Kerouac. Photograph: John Cohen/Getty Images

Jack Kerouac – anti-establishment icon, revolutionary author of the American classic On the Road, pioneer of the Beat Generation and, perhaps most of all, enduring symbol of cool.

If a dog-eared paperback of On the Road slung in your back pocket was once the ultimate avant-garde accessory, 100 years after his birth, a Kerouac namecheck has become something of a trope on dating apps. New analysis by OkCupid has shown that mentions of the Beat poets and On the Road in profiles (more often on those belonging to men) have increased more than threefold in the past five years.

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