A brief interview excerpt in which Jonathan Shaw recalls discovering Jack Kerouac’s On the Road as a teenager (around 16–17) while living in Hollywood amid drug addiction and street life. He describes the book’s immediate, transformative impact—calling it a revelation and a perceived ‘way out’ of his destructive circumstances.
Give me a little bit of a insight into where you were at in life when on the Road by Kerouac entered the pictures. I was probably 16, 17.
So I was living in Hollywood. Teenage junkie. All my friends were dying of overdoses. You know, we were living that really grungy, fucked up life. So who tells you about the book or how do you come across it? Nobody. I saw this book and the words just shot out into my consciousness like.
Lightning. It just hit me on the road. And I took this book and I went back and I read it, and suddenly I was like, this is the way out, this is the way out.
