On the Road: The Original Scroll

Jack  Kerouac

Viking

With the pub­li­ca­tion of On the Road: The Original Scroll (Viking), Jack Kerouac takes a step beyond can­on­iza­tion toward beat­i­tude itself. The scroll man­u­script of this 1957 novel is one of the sacred arti­facts of the Beat era, and con­flict­ing sto­ries about it have cir­cu­lated among the acolytes for years: that rolls of draw­ing paper had been taped together to form the scroll (true), so that a Benzedrine– (false) and caffeine-fuelled (true) Kerouac could type at speed with no need to pause after each page; that a dog had chewed one end (true). This codex ver­sion of the scroll is pref­aced by an aston­ish­ing one hun­dred pages of front mat­ter, includ­ing no fewer than four sep­a­rate intro­duc­tions: a for­mi­da­ble bul­wark pro­tect­ing the novel from its read­ers. The most obvi­ous dif­fer­ence between the man­u­script and pub­lished ver­sions is Kerouac’s use of actual names through­out (Neal Cassady later renamed Dean Moriarty, Allen Ginsberg becom­ing Carlo Marx, and so on). Sex scenes were toned down for the ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion, and much of Kerouac’s reflex­ive misog­yny was soft­ened or removed. The man­u­script itself was sold at auc­tion in May 2001 for more than $2 mil­lion, to Jim Irsay (owner of the Indianapolis Colts), who promised to “give peo­ple an oppor­tu­nity to enjoy it.” An exhibit fea­tur­ing the scroll has been criss-crossing the usa since 2004; in fall 2007 it was on dis­play at the New York Public Library. Diehard Beat fanat­ics may feel the urge to gen­u­flect as they watch the scroll being unrolled on YouTube.