On The Road 1

The events in On the Road are connected not as fictional set pieces but as actual occurrences that Kerouac experienced and wrote down in personal diaries and journals. Therefore, it is unnecessary for Sal to make up things to keep the narrative moving. In the sense, then, that the events described actually happened as he says they happened, Sal is a reliable narrator. You can see this in the minute detail Sal uses describing the people and places he meets.
The dialogue of each character in the book quite accurately reflects the personalities Kerouac describes. For instance, Dean “the holy con-man with the shining mind” (5) is forever spitting out happily crazed sentences that reveal his interest in everything life shows him. As he says of one stranger they pass on their journeys, “Yes! Dig him! Now consider his soul--stop awhile and consider” (113). The towns Sal and his friends pass through are each viewed as unique stops along the road. Considering the autobiographical nature of the story and this attention to detail, I see no reason to think of Sal as an unreliable narrator, even if his chronology could conceivably be muddled by strongly held personal convictions, drugs, or depression.