About a month ago, the Times had several articles marking the 50th anniversary of On the Road. I had starting writing a post on it, but got distracted by something else bright and shiny. I’m glad that David Brooks reminded me about it.

I was a year or two out of college working for $18,000 a year as an editor at Simon & Schuster. I’m still surprised that someone was stupid enough to make a 23 year old a full editor. My friends and I would stay up until 5:00 am at blues clubs and then go into work the next day. But my boss prided himself on being unconventional, so he gave me a shot. I also think he had a thing for redheads.

I was in my little office going over a manuscript, when my buddy, Robin, called. She was driving her old Volvo to San Fransisco, where she had just found a job. Did I want to come with her for the week drive? Sure, I said.

My mom thought it was a lousy idea. I had just been accepted at the University of Chicago, and I would have to save my money for grad school. Mom is also not big on acts of utter randomness, so I had to listen to her gripes on the phone for a week. But I went anyway.

Robin had the car packed to the brim with all her crap. The trunk and the backseat we completely filled, except for a couple of inches for my bag. The first night, we stayed with my brother at the University of Virginia. The next night, we camped in Tennessee. And we bopped our way through the Southern states crashing on people’s sofas or pitching a tent in the woods.

There were some mishaps. In Oklahoma, her tire lost an inch of tread. We stopped at some gas station by the side of the highway where they gave us a new tire. Apparently, the idea of a new tire in Oklahoma is to glue the tread back on the old tire. We discovered this in the middle of the Arizona dessert where I had urged Robin to take us on a two hour detour to check out an archeological site. We were in 110 degree heat, on the side of a dirt road, 50 miles from the highway with no tires. We had also lost muffler on that dirt road, because the car was hanging so low with all of Robin’s crap. The muffler snapped off when we hit a ditch in the road. She reattached it with some duct tape. Yeah. After the tire and the muffler incident, we didn’t talk until we got to San Francisco.

But before that car drama, Robin and I had a fabulous time. She had brought a tattered copy of On the Road. And we took turns reading from it out loud, while the other drove. David Brooks pulled out a fabulous quote from the book,

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn.

After On the Road, I read a bunch of Hunter Thompson and had some adventures that were mostly harmless, but terribly fun.

Brooks despairs that kids today don’t have that wild period of life where they do the acts of utter randomness that make life so interesting. The things we tell stories about when we become saddled with responsibility later in life. He blames the "new gentility," which finds the Sal Paradise story sad and depressing.

They run afoul of the new gentility, the rules laid down by the
health experts, childcare experts, guidance counselors, safety
advisers, admissions officers, virtuecrats and employers to regulate
the lives of the young. They seem dangerous, childish and embarrassing
in the world of professionalized adolescence and professionalized
intellect.

If Sal Paradise were alive today, he’d be a product of
the new rules. He’d be a grad student with an interest in power yoga,
on the road to the M.L.A. convention with a documentary about a
politically engaged Manitoban dance troupe that he hopes will win a
MacArthur grant. He’d be driving a Prius, going a conscientious 55,
wearing a seat belt and calling Mom from the Comfort Inns.

My students aren’t having random adventures, not because of the mommy state, but because they have more financial worries than we had. They have monumental student loan debts. They face the prospect of having to save for ten years before buying a home. (The average cost of an apartment in Manhattan just jumped to $1.3 million. Homes in my area start at $400,000.) Certain careers simply don’t provide a living income anymore. Teachers, writers, artists are being pushed to more distant suburbs. So, everyone is a business major. They don’t have health insurance.

Sal Paradise grew up, became an investment banker, voted Republican, and jacked up the cost of home prices. And now, when I take a break in a lecture and advise the kids to backpack through Europe or move to the city, they look at me like I’m out of my mind.