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Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" Unrolled

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wadc45

wadc45

Bourbon, Bow Ties and Baseball Hats
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050214/ap_en_ot/kerouac_scroll

'On the Road' Unscrolled for First Time

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<!-- TextStart -->By TODD DVORAK, Associated Press Writer

IOWA CITY, Iowa - The manuscript begins simply enough: "I first met Neal not long after my father died."

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The conclusion, once located at the other end of a 120-foot long scroll, is a different story. It's missing, rumored to have been chewed by a dog, an alibi seemingly supported by the stains and jagged tear across the final page.



The tale that flows in between, pounded out in single-space type on paper made yellow and brittle by time, is the American classic "On the Road," written by the godfather of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac.



For the first time, fans of Kerouac and beatniks old and new have a chance to see every word, edit and smudge of his original manuscript, unrolled end to end and under glass at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. It is the first time during its international tour that the yellowed and brittle manuscript has been shown unspooled.



"This is the first time people anywhere will be able to get the full effect of the work," said Howard Collinson, the museum's director. "It does have the character of a piece of artwork, like some kind of performance art. But at the same time, I don't think it was an act of convenience that he put his novel together this way."



During a 20-day stint in 1951, Kerouac hunkered down in front of a typewriter at a friend's New York apartment. Hopped up on coffee and Benzedrine, he began retelling the tale of the aimless trek he made across America. In a spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness burst, Kerouac typed away on long sheets of tracing paper, taping each finished page to the previous one to form one continuous, rolling text.



Published six years later, "On the Road" won the praise of critics and won Kerouac instant fame. The book also became the icon of the post-World War II subculture of intellectuals, writers, musicians and rebels, the beatniks who identified with the freedom of his cross-country odyssey and embraced Kerouac's disdain for the conformity, materialism and political convention of the 1950s.



After his death in 1969, the scroll bounced around, spending time some say in a dorm room closet, before landing at the New York Public Library. In 2001, Indianapolis Colts' owner Jim Irsay bought the scroll for $2.43 million at an auction, then decided to dispatch it along much of the same path that inspired its author.



"In part he feels like a caretaker, but he also feels a responsibility to share with people something that was so influential on a generation," Jim Canary, hired to take care of the scroll, said of Irsay.



The manuscript, attached at each end to acrylic spools, just arrived in Iowa City from Rome, Italy, where Canary said it was read nonstop as part of a performance by a group of Italian writers and actors.



Currently, it is on display inside a freestanding metal case covered with Plexiglas. From a distance, Collinson said the scroll highlighted against the museum's dark, concrete floor fittingly resembles the white center line of a highway.



The display is accompanied by background music from the era's jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman and Dizzy Gillespie. There is also a film featuring snippets of influential movies of the period and an audio recording of Kerouac reading excerpts from the book nearby.

The exhibit will be on display through March 12, before a run at the Las Vegas Public Library, March 24-May 15.
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One of my favorites stories of all time...
 
agreed.....and i think grad21 is going to chime in with his appreciation for the author as well....

besides road, dharma bums, desolation angels, lonesome traveler, visions of gerard, and big sur are my personal favorites....
 
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agreed..."the dharma bums" is great...

"only one thing I'll say for the people watching television, the millions and millions of the one eye: they're not hurting anyone."
 
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Kerouac is amazing...read Memory Babe for an excellent biography...his writing marathons are unreal. Massive drugs, booze, and hours of writing...he had a clothesline in his room where he would simply remove the sweaty Tshirts and hang them on the line. There were literally dozens of shirts hanging in the room and he would pull down a dry one and keep writing...

JK was also a standout football player....

However, Kerouac is lost without Cassady...

Neal Cassady is an icon...read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for a good vision of Neal, Ken Kesey, and the Merry Pranksters. I have a VHS of video footage from that famous bus trip.

Sushi, definitely read Dharma...you might like Naked Lunch also (Burroughs was a genius)
 
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grad....have you ever read "GO" by holmes.....it is a direct account of kerouac (pasternik), cassady, ginsberg, burroughs and their adventures....a great read...

also Carolyn Cassady has a great book that details the lives of both cassady and kerouac....
 
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I'm sure you saw this grad, but I just heard about it today...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050523/en_nm/arts_kerouac_dc_2

Kerouac play discovered in New Jersey warehouse <!-- END HEADLINE -->
<!-- BEGIN STORY BODY -->Mon May 23, 5:20 PM ET



A previously unknown play by Jack Kerouac, written in the same year as his beatnik classic novel "On The Road" was published, has been discovered languishing in a warehouse more than three decades after his death.

Best Life magazine, which plans to publish an excerpt from the play called "Beat Generation" in its July issue, said on Monday the play came to light when Kerouac's agent Sterling Lord was going through old files in a warehouse in New Jersey.

The play details "a day in the drink-and-drug-hazed life of his own literary alter ego, Jack Duluoz, as he parties and gambles with thinly veiled characters based on Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady and other Beat legends."

Best Life editor Stephen Perrine said he met Lord for lunch several weeks ago and it occurred to him to ask whether he had any undiscovered manuscripts. "Sterling remarked, 'That's so strange that you should ask that,"' Perrine said.

Kerouac, who died in 1969 at the age of 47, wrote the play in 1957, the same year "On The Road," a thinly fictionalized autobiography about a cross-country journey that became a classic of American 20th-century literature, was published.

Best Life, a lifestyle magazine for men, said in a statement that Lord recalled the play had been sent to Marlon Brando before Kerouac asked Lord to shelve the project and it lay waiting in his files, forgotten for nearly 50 years.

The entire play will be published in October by Thunder's Mouth Press.

"This is a major work by one of the biggest names in American literary history, and here it is, unread, gathering dust for nearly half a century," Perrine said. The July issue of the magazine with the excerpt goes on sale June 14.
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Link
Uncensored 'On the Road' to be published


LOWELL, Mass. - Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" will be published in its unedited original scroll version by Viking Press, which published the Beat Generation classic in September 1957.

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John Sampas, executor of the writer's literary estate and brother of Stella Sampas, Kerouac's third wife, said he has signed a contract with Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group USA. He hopes the work will be out by the end of next year, the 50th anniversary of the publication.
"Incidents in the original were edited out of the published version because of the censorship of the time," said Sampas, who noted that some of the edited sections refer to drugs and sex. "On the scroll, entire paragraphs are crossed out and not included in the published version."
Sampras said the new version will be in book form, but taken from the original scroll. Any sections Kerouac had crossed out before turning it into the publisher will be excluded in the new edition.
In 1951, Kerouac, hopped up on coffee and Benzedrine, sat at a typewriter and began retelling the tale of an aimless trek he made across America. In a spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness burst, he typed on long sheets of tracing paper, taping each finished page to the previous one to form one continuous, rolling text.
Published six years later, "On the Road" won critical praise and became an icon of the post-World War II subculture of intellectuals, writers, musicians and rebels who identified with the freedom of Kerouac's cross-country odyssey and embraced his disdain for 1950s conformity.
The original, 120-foot, coffee-stained scroll that is yellowing with age was purchased in 2001 by James Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $2.43 million. The scroll is touring U.S. museums and libraries.
 
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