Walk by the Hogan store in Soho and you’ll see the window display advertising their Kerouac-inspired line of $1300 travel bags and $500 work boots.

Sad that the author’s image has been appropriated by a clothing company to promote a lifestyle the man’s opus On the Road, utterly rejected. It doesn’t matter whether Kerouac would have bought the boots himself once he had a bit of money; it’s the idea that you should do something because someone else did it that betrays Kerouac’s ideals.

Hogan’s play is almost as bad as what the Gap tried a few years back: “Kerouac wore khakis.” Nevermind that Kerouac’s total espousal of being lay in his belief you should should follow no truth but your own.

The horrible genius of the best advertising is how it understands so well how badly we misunderstand ourselves.