A West Coast Canuck in the Land of Yankee Doodle Dandy: Bringing a Fresh Perspective to the Modern Road Novel

This essay explores some of the conventions of the modern road novel, as established by Jack Kerouac with On the Road (1957), particularly in regards to the background and nationality of the most well-known road narrators. It proceeds to compare how these conventions have been furthered by subsequent generations of road authors, including Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, and contrasts this with the author’s own road novel, The Drive (2013). In so doing it seeks to highlight the ways in which The Drive brings a new and distinct narrative perspective to a well-established tradition