The western part of the United States includes thirteen states that are home to approximately 80,000,000 Americans, but remains one of the least populated regions of the country (US Census Bureau 2010) . In some ways, the American West is the closest thing to a “frontier” the modernized United States has left. You can travel to Montana and immerse yourself in a world not unlike that of your ancestors, just as easily as you can travel to California, widely considered the epicenter of growth and modernization in the United States. With Silicon Valley and Yellowstone all in one region, there is a unique sense of space presented within the West that is unattainable from North, East, or South America. For example, a trip to New York City may be quite comparable to a trip to Pittsburgh, but a trip to San Francisco compared to Rapid City offers a completely different cultural experience. If the West were just a replica of the American East, Kerouac's On the Road would never have existed. The wide disparity between the spaces of the New West is a major reason for the effectiveness of Coupland's Generation X. Without the spaces of the American West, the comic genius of Portlandia would not exist! In an effort to overcome writer's block, Jack Kerouac, along with Neal Cassady, explored the American West in a series of adventures from 1947 to 1950. On the Road is the "love child" of Kerouac and Cassady's escapades, fueled from jazz, poetry and drug use. Its political and aesthetic dimensions are entirely complex, but intertwined. On the Road tells the story of a personal quest for meaning and belonging in a time when conformity was lauded and outsiders scorned. It was during this......middle of paper......nitic, indeed; trying to stand out and present themselves as unique, Portlanders seem to fit into a few general categories. The spaces of the American West are far from uniform, in fact, they could be considered the exact opposite. This variety is what distinguishes the West from the rest of the United States. The lack of a more common landscape and culture, as in the American East, provides the backdrop for a plethora of literary prowess from authors such as Jack Kerouac and Douglas Coupland, who saw the American West as the perfect setting for two of the most influential novels of our time. The wide open road was as much an inspiration to Kerouac as the concrete megalopolises of shopping malls, fast food outlets and homes were to Coupland. Western culture would be a fraction of what it is today if it were not for its exceptional diversity across space.