What would On the Road have been like if Kerouac’s anti-heroes had access to Four Loko?
That’s one of many questions a fantastic new Tumblr called “On the Bro’d” is posing to fans of the 1957 Beat classic. Its premise? “Every sentence of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, retold for bros.”
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The iconoclastic author claimed to have written On the Road in its entirety during a boozy, drug-addled span of a mere three weeks. A defining piece of American literature, the original tale is loaded with escapist imagery and lofty, ambitious prose — characteristics that eventually came to define an entire generation of writers.
Here’s a sample passage from the original where Kerouac’s autobiographical protagonist, Sal, retells a typical night with his hard-partying pal, Dean Moriarty:
“One night when Dean ate supper at my house — he already had the parking-lot job in New York — he leaned over my shoulder as I typed rapidly away and said, ‘Come on man, those girls won’t wait, make it fast.’ I said, ‘Hold on just a minute, I’ll be right with you soon as I finish this chapter,’ and it was one of the best chapters in the book. Then I dressed and off we flew to New York to meet some girls. As we rode in the bus in the weird phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other with fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly, and I was beginning to get the bug like Dean.”
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Too literary for you? Here’s its equally brilliant, PG-13 version brimming with testosterone:
“One night when Dean drank Sparks at my house— he already hit the gym earlier— he leaned over my shoulders as I did P90X and said, ‘Come on bro, those honies won’t wait, make it fast.’ I said, ‘Chill the f*** out, I’ll be right with you as soon as I finish these lunges,’ and they were some of the hardest lunges in the whole P90X system. Then I geared up and off we flew to downtown Columbus to meet some chicks. As we rode in my Land Rover in the weird phosphorescent void of South Campus we leaned on each other (no homo) fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly, and I was beginning to get f***ing buzzed like Dean.”
“On the Bro’d” is still a work in progress, and though NewsFeed doesn’t want to spoil too much, be forewarned: Further reading tackles a broad range of bro-relevant issues, including the poetic merits of Linkin Park, and how to best shrug off awkward bouts of homophobia in a way that would make Ginsberg blush.
Best read with a Natty Light in hand, of course.
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