More melancholy than the thought of Homesick: The Travel Book was something I read about Jack Kerouac. At the age of fifty, with On the Road well behind him, he decided to hitchhike across America again. He was fatter now and felt defeated, but he was convinced he could repeat his cross-country epic. So he left New York, seeking California. His menacing features were ineradicable, and times had changed. The lugubrious man reached New Jersey; there he stood for hours in the rain, trying to thumb a ride, until at last he gave up and took a bus home.