Sal Paradise, the narrator of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), sees the book's central character, Dean Moriarty, as a hero in a variety of American styles—the spirit of the West, the energetic mover and doer, the cowboy, the Whitman-like enthusiast, "that mad Ahab at the wheel" compelling others at hissing, incredible speeds across the country. But the subsuming model for the Cassady legend is of the American hero as a confidence man…. (p. 266)

In Sal's usage, "con-man" is a phrase of admiration—"the holy con-man with the shining mind," "a great amorous soul such as only a con-man can have"—and the novel explores the meaning and value of a confidence man in modern American life.

Sal Paradise is essential to the creation of a con man as hero, for someone has to register that radiant energy, someone has to receive and interpret it, almost like a...