Jack Kerouac

As a willing victim of both fine, fine institutions, I can say that the University of Chicago is creepier than Columbia—creepier in the sense of both “What is on that guy’s computer?” and the dim, uneasy, heimlich/unheimlich perception of being on the brink of some abyss or other.

On the Road is now 50 years old, so of course there are new editions and all sorts of critical reappraisals that tell us what everybody already knows: sometimes the Beats are good, and sometimes you’re better off watching the Simpsons episode with Ned Flanders’ parents. The real question is how we can cash in.