On The Ride, by Jack Kerouac
We were on the roof of Middletown and all we could do was yell, I guess. We were up all night rolling around that crazy loop, yelling “Go, man, go,” bee-bop sounding out on ahead along the fabulous stretch of Williams Street, past Marco’s, past that incense place, past the grilled cheese cart, the too-huge sky vaulting out over our heads. The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to Ride, mad to visit both falafel carts in one night, mad to visit that one other cart by the Bayit that serves pretty good hot dogs, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like a firecracker that goes poof-kapow-zam-zing-wah-bang out on along across the wide star-dotted skies of Central Connecticut.
A Portrait of the Artist on the Ride, by James Joyce
Facing Albritton as it passed the window, Stephen held a falafel pita wrap aloft and intoned:
— Introibo ad altare meletrici.
He beheld the even fall of the onfalling evening’s slow succourous sussurus, the earlyevening light falling evenly over the mutinous WestCo mulchpile, over the scrotumtightening Butthole weeds, falling faintly and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, on all the Nics and the Butts.
A Universal History of the Ride, by Jorge Luis Borges
During a short bus ride from Olin Library to Science Library, I sipped mate with a Uruguayan gaucho named Ibn Al-Ulmar, a hard-bitten Arabian rancher who had squandered his money in the hard-bitten brothels and tango halls of Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
“Lie down on the floor between the seats,” he told me. “Press your knees against your chest, and look between your legs. You will see the past, the present, the future, and the entire physical contents of the universe compressed to a single point.”
Heeding his words, I assumed this position. At first, all I could see was beige upholstery. After a few moments, I saw a point of blinding light. Then red, then nothing.
“You, Borges, will surely see,” said Al-Umar, as he plunged his knife again into my ribs, “that History and Time are the true custodians of wealth.”
Catcher in the Ride, by J.D. Salinger
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll want to know is that some phony pulled up to the curb of Church and High and told me to get in. What a goddamn phony. I mean, I told him to take me all the way to Indian Hill because you can never get really sexy with a girl in a Fauver triple, I mean, really sexy, but he wouldn’t even take me past DKE. Goddamn DKE. It always ends up making me blue as hell. That really kills me. It really does. I mean, I asked him where all the DKE bros go in winter — have you ever seen a DKE bro in winter? Do they still wear those phony Adidas sandals? — but he just got real touchy about that and told me he had other passengers to pick up, and anyways Sally was waiting for me at Indian Hill. Goddamn girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. I mean, those Rho Ep girls really get me hot. Where do they go in the winter?
