Tom Wolfe · 1968 · road

Tom Wolfe's account of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, who painted a 1939 school bus in day-glo, called it Furthur, put Neal Cassady at the wheel and drove it across America in 1964. The book that made New Journalism, and the one where the Beats hand the sixties over in person.

1. 1
   La Honda

   Ken Kesey's place in the redwoods above Palo Alto, where the Merry Pranksters assemble - and where a 1939 International Harvester school bus is painted in day-glo, wired for sound, and named Furthur with two Rs.

2. 2
   Phoenix

   Summer 1964, and the bus goes east with Neal Cassady driving - the same Cassady who was Dean Moriarty, which is Wolfe's whole point about the Beats handing something over to whatever came next.

3. 3
   Houston

   Larry McMurtry's house in Texas, where the bus pulls up and Stark Naked gets off in the condition her name suggests - one of the set pieces, and the first sign that the trip is not going to stay funny.

4. 4
   New York

   The nominal destination and the World's Fair, and a meeting with Kerouac that does not go well - the old king sitting on the couch declining to join in, and Wolfe getting the whole handover in one scene.

5. 5
   San Francisco

   Back west for the Acid Tests, the Grateful Dead and the Trips Festival - and Kesey arrested, which turns the story from a party into something with consequences.

6. 6
   Manzanillo

   He jumps bail and runs to Mexico, faking a suicide note - and the Pranksters follow him to the coast, which is where the book gets strange and where Wolfe's own reporting turns first-hand.