By Andrew W. M. Beierle, AIW Board Member

I am preparing for my first transcontinental road trip, a weeklong journey to my new home in the San Bernardino National Forest, 6,109 feet above sea level, where I plan to begin a new long-term writing project.

Perhaps the most daunting aspect of this life-changing 2,645-mile trek is the distance itself. I dislike long drives. I get bored and impatient. I am prone to highway hypnosis. To distract myself, I am bringing along my favorite travel CD, an oft-played recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1994 musical, Sunset Boulevard. I also plan to listen, for a second time, to a recording of Jack Kerouac’s classic, On the Road, as read by actor Matt Dillon.

My route parallels Kerouac’s original 1947 journey fairly closely, especially the farther west I get, but how I will travel and what I will see could not be more different. Kerouc’s trip was rough-and-tumble and he encountered a ragtag collection of characters, sometimes big-hearted, often down on their luck. He carried a pitiful amount of cash with him and, if I recall correctly, sometimes spent it unwisely. My route has been plotted not by happenstance but by AAA and Mapquest. I’ll be cruising west in a red Honda Accord sport coupe, venerable but still supremely reliable, with A/C, sunroof, CD player, and, at the suggestion of my friend, novelist and short-story writer Allison Amend, a Motorola Motonav TN765T 5.1-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator.

Likewise, the machine Kerouac used to create his masterwork, an ancient black Underwood typewriter with the keys passing through a semi-circular faceplate that looks a bit like a demonic smile, is the antithesis of my gleaming twenty-four-inch iMac with its 1-TB hard drive. Kerouac typed his manuscript on a 120-foot scroll of paper; I cut and paste electrons.

How, I wonder, will these differences in travel and technology shape my trip and, more importantly, my observations? (I’m leaving the differences between Kerouac’s brain and mine out of the equation.) Is the romance of the road long gone? Have interstate highways, hermetically sealed vehicles, and voice-activated gizmos sterilized our landscapes, anesthetized our limbic systems?

There is much talk these days about the decline of publishing, the death of print. But is writing on a softly clicking computer different in some essential way than composing on a clattering keyboard? Can On the Road be read on a Kindle or Nook or iPad (or listened to on a CD at 70 miles per hour) without losing something essential, some contact with the paper that reflects the substance of the original manuscript? Who knows?

I wish I could be more like Jack Kerouc. At least I think I do. I’d like to think that as writers we share some instincts, some reflexes; that I might find a way to make my journey as spontaneous and adventuresome as his; that what I write about it might have even an iota of his insight and energy. Perhaps that is as remote a possibility as attempting to see the landscape through the eyes of Lewis and Clark. Perhaps not. Perhaps one day, I may turn off the Motonav and allow myself to just get lost in America.

Andrew W. M. Beierle is the author of the novels The Winter of Our Discothèque and First Person Plural. He will continue to serve on the board as AIW’s West Coast representative.