Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-205).

[book 1.] Girls, visions, everything : the education of Sal Paradise -- Growing up Kerouac -- The parable of the wet hitchhiker -- What would Jack do? -- [book 2.] Paradise among the Dingledodies : the parables of men -- The mad ones -- Sal's guide to work and money -- The book of lost fathers -- [book 3.] The true story of the world is a French movie : the parables of love and sex -- How not to pick up girls -- The family guy -- [book 4.] We don't go skating like the Scott Fitzgeralds : the parables of jazz -- The Tao of Orooni-- We know time -- [book 5.] Visions of Sal : the book of revelations -- The holy goofs -- Ghosts -- Visions -- The aftermath : success and its discontents -- Sad Paradise and the lessons unlearned.

"In Why Kerouac Matters, John Leland embarks on a discussion of On the Road, arguing that it still matters because at its core it is full of lessons about how to grow up. Leland's focus is on Sal Paradise, the Kerouac alter ego, who has always been overshadowed by his fictional running buddy Dean Moriarty. Leland examines the lessons that Paradise absorbs and dispenses on his novelistic journey to manhood, and how those lessons - about work and money, love and sex, art and holiness - still reverberate today. He shows how On the Road is a primer for male friendship and the cultivation of traditional family values, and contends that the stereotype of the two wild and crazy guys obscures the novel's core themes of the search for atonement, redemption and divine revelation."--BOOK JACKET.