On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty", the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance.
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The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published word for word as Kerouac originally composed it
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll, this document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary American literary history. It represents the first full expression of Kerouac's revolutionary aesthetic, the identifiable point at which his thematic vision and narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital experimentation in the American literary, musical, and visual arts in the post-World War II period.
It was not until more than six years later, and several new drafts, that Viking published, in 1957, the novel known to us today. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of On the Road, Viking will publish the 1951 scroll in a standard book format. The differences between the two versions are principally ones of significant detail and altered emphasis. The scroll is slightly longer and has a heightened linguistic virtuosity and a more sexually frenetic tone. It also uses the real names of Kerouac's friends instead of the fictional names he later invented for them. The transcription of the scroll was done by Howard Cunnell who, along with Joshua Kupetz, George Mouratidis, and Penny Vlagopoulos, provides a critical introduction that explains the fascinating compositional and publication history of On the Road and anchors the text in its historical, political, and social context.
Celebrating 50 Years of On the Road
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 From the back cover of On the Road: The Original Scroll: Jack Kerouac displaying one of his later scroll manuscripts, most likely The Dharma Bums |
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From Publishers Weekly
In introducing the fabled first draft of Kerouac's autobiographical novel-written on a single giant roll of paper, without breaks in the text, in an amphetamine-fueled marathon-editor Howard Cunnell refers to Allen Ginsberg's claim that "the published novel is not at all like the wild book Kerouac typed in '51." Characters are identified by their real names (rather than the 1957 version's apt pseudonyms) and their love affairs are more explicit, giving the book a juicy memoir-like feel, especially where Cassady and Ginsberg are concerned. The plot, however, is identical. Neal Cassady joins Kerouac and Ginsberg's bohemian circle in New York in the late 1940's, and inspires and cons them into traveling around the country, "searching for a lost inheritance, for fathers, for family, for home, even for America." The death of Kerouac's father plays a larger role in the story than in the 1957 version; and Justin W. Brierly, a teacher who served as mentor to Cassady and has a cameo in the published book, makes a series of recurring appearances in the scroll. The lack of paragraphs or chapters emphasizes the breathless intensity of Kerouac's prose. The anniversary publicity will introduce this classic to a new generation of readers, and while the scroll probably won't displace the novel's more familiar, polished incarnation, it will be of keen interest to beat aficionados and scholars.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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127 of 143 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" is commemorated by the release of three major volumes. They are a designated 50th Anniversary edition; "On The Road: The Original Scroll", the long-awaited controversial release of the uncensored 120-foot alleged "teletype roll" on which Kerouac blazingly blasted out his masterwork in just three weeks, six years before its publication; and a handsome Library of America edition, "Jack Kerouac: Road Novels 1957-1960", edited with textual notes by historian Douglas Brinkley, featuring Road and four other of his best known novels along with selections from his journals. (See separate review).
Whether this literary blitz will lead to a grand revival of interest in Kerouac's work by both old and new generations has yet to be seen. But it secures his reputation as a major American writer because his voice resonates with the great poignant prose of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and John Steinbeck, celebrating the wonders and adventures of youthful travels on the open road. In the book's first major favorable review, Gilbert Millstein of The New York Times praised "On The Road" as being to the Beat Generation what Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" was to its precedent bohemian Lost Generation.
Millions of readers and generations of authors have been influenced by the "On The Road", typically discovered by readers in their adolescence. Almost everyone who has read the book remembers when and where they first encountered it, the way one indelibly recalls the loss of virginity.
Praise for Kerouac's work is far from universal. Many academics, critics and other writers dismiss him as a primitive and pretender, his writings merely ramblings of a drunken bum, and already are expressing displeasure at his being included as an author worthy of the high-brow Library of America collection. Truman Capote, an early inductee into the series, famously scoffed of Kerouac's prose, "It isn't writing. It's typing." But like his detractor, "On The Road" and Kerouac's other books have withstood the great test of time.
It has been known for decades Road was begun in 1948. Rough draft segments of Road are found in Kerouac's journals he kept since a youngster in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, now collected and edited by Brinkley in the recent book "Windblown World".
Before the long-delayed publication of "On The Road" in 1957, what commonly is referred to as the full "first draft" was typed out at 100 words a minute during three weeks in April 1951 on a 120-foot length of paper often called a "teletype roll". It is one long, single-spaced, unbroken paragraph. Some say Kerouac wrote it on a Benzedrine binge; others point to a letter Kerouac wrote to Cassady saying it was just "coffee" that fueled his mind. While there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that speed really was the driving factor, in the end, this is just more pieces of minutiae and trivia permeating the Kerouac mythology, and really doesn't seem to matter.
In 2001, the original scroll was purchased at a Christies' auction in New York by Indianapolis Colts owner James Irsay for $2.43 million, a world record for a manuscript. After his successful bid, the following day Irsay allegedly was offered twice the price for it, and has said that he was prepared to pay as much as $10 million.
A good friend of Brinkley, Irsay dispatched his private jet to pick him up and accompany him to the auction as an "advisor". Irsay helped organize an extensive tour of the scroll, now encased in a long glass topped and sided table, with the scroll unfurled several feet and connected to two adjacent Torah-like cylinders which curators may occasionally carefully wind to reveal another segment of the text. It has been restored by adding backing and treating the front with a preservative. After a final tour date in 2009, Irsay plans to donate it to Lilly Library at the University of Indiana.
The "scroll" has hundreds of hand-written edits by Kerouac and many sections of lines deleted by cross-outs. John Sampas, Kerouac's literary executor, told MSNBC these would not be included in Viking's "uncensored" release. The original famous opening line of "On The Road" stating Kerouac first met Moriarty soon after Kerouac separated from his wife appears in Scroll recounting he first met Cassady after the death of Kerouac's father. The actual scroll ends abruptly, without the long, haunting Wolfeian paragraph closing the novel, pertaining to unsuccessful searches for Neal Cassady's father in Denver. The scroll was entrusted to his friend Lucien Carr for safekeeping, and Carr's dog chewed up the end. "Original Scroll" appendages a supposition of several pages in an effort to complete the manuscript and show its last words were close to the 1957 first edition. This was written by editor Howard Cunnell and is somewhat a leap of faith.
Sampas has claimed Viking's 1957 "censorship" was due to explicit references to sex and drugs. The "F" word was scratched out by Kerouac on the first page of the scroll text but interestingly does appear in The Original Scroll, although Sampas averred scratch-outs would not be included. The scroll was published despite potential libel problems involving characters' real names. Cassady and Ginsberg signed releases for their pseudonymous inclusion in Road. Neal Cassady's wife, Carolyn, who did not, lives in Great Britain, where libel verdicts are easier to obtain, and angrily denounced as a "travesty" plans to publish the scroll.
Four Kerouac scholars put Original Scroll together. Cunnell filled gaps and made calls on original deletions, corrected spelling, inserted paragraph breaks, and edited it for a more cohesive read. Cunnell, Joshua Kupetz, Penny Vlagopoulus and George Mouratidis wrote superbly insightful introductory background material and analysis, the book's first 97 pages.
An enduring question about the scroll concerns whether it actually was typed onto teletype paper. There are arguments for and against this. Carr, a news editor at New York's United Press International bureau, supplied Kerouac with teletype paper in the early 1950s. Some say the "scroll" was taped together in 12-foot segments.
Scroll examiners including Cunnell say portions of it have a scored line down one side, suggesting it may have been hand-ruled and cut to fit the platen of Kerouac's typewriter, indicating it was not teletype paper. However, Cunnell in Original Scroll also makes some errors, not the least of which is that the Burroughs house in Algiers was located next to a bayou. In fact it is about two blocks from the river and miles from the nearest bayou.
Brinkley in "Windblown World" acknowledges Carr gave Kerouac teletype paper, but refers to the scroll as "Japanese art tracing paper". In a 1979 New York Times article, Cassady biogarhper ("Holy Goof") William Plummer wrote that Kerouac "fed into his typewriter a bulky roll of Chinese art paper". The paper used also has been referred to variously as onion-skin, "nearly translucent", and as architectural drafting paper. Kerouac told fellow beat writer John Clellon Holmes that he planned to write the manuscript on "a roll of shelf paper."
In her bitter "Nobody's Wife", (2000), Kerouac's second wife Joan Haverty quotes him saying "'See what I found in that cabinet over there? This whole big roll of paper the same width as typing paper.'"
Gerald Nicosia's critical biography "Memory Babe" states Kerouac found "20-foot sheets of Japanese art paper" in the same apartment Kerouac shared with Haverty - whose previous tenant was her friend Bill Cannastra, beheaded in a subway accident. The apartment was in the same building as that of Carr. This may be Brinkley's "Japanese art paper" postulation source. Cunnell maintains the roll was taped together from eight pieces of very thin sheets owned by Cannastra.
After Kerouac presented the scroll to publisher Robert Giroux in 1951, unfurled it in his office and exclaimed "Here's my novel!" Giroux was shocked by the one long unbroken single-spaced paragraph and rejected it outright. Startled by the format and complaining printers would not be able to compose from it, Giroux said it "felt rubbery, like Thermo-fax paper."
The back dust jacket photo of "Scroll" shows Kerouac holding long, unfurled footage of a paper roll, connected to a large roll of paper, clearly not taped together. The book speculates that Kerouac used this particular roll for his second novel, The Dharma Bums.
The Road scroll now is yellowed with age the way foolscap or newsprint-type teletype paper degrades quickly due to acid content. While this continuing literary mystery deserves proper forensic examination, in the end, it too, really doesn't matter.
"On The Road: The Original Scroll" is well worth buying and reading, and ultimately, may appear to some (as initially it did to me) to be a better, more contextually significant book than "On The Road" as published that fateful day of September 5, 1957. The astute introductions alone are worth the price of admission and provide a rich history of the several drafts of the book ultimately published as Road. Reading the actual scroll text is a revelation worthy of the long wait and lends great insight into the factual material of the evolution of the subsequent drafts.
But after reading "Scroll", more than 35 years after I first encountered "Road", in re-reading the text of the common edition as we know it today, my feelings remain quite mixed. True died-in-the wool fans will undoubtedly at some point place both books next to each other so they can plainly see the differences. Read more ›
Whether this literary blitz will lead to a grand revival of interest in Kerouac's work by both old and new generations has yet to be seen. But it secures his reputation as a major American writer because his voice resonates with the great poignant prose of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and John Steinbeck, celebrating the wonders and adventures of youthful travels on the open road. In the book's first major favorable review, Gilbert Millstein of The New York Times praised "On The Road" as being to the Beat Generation what Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" was to its precedent bohemian Lost Generation.
Millions of readers and generations of authors have been influenced by the "On The Road", typically discovered by readers in their adolescence. Almost everyone who has read the book remembers when and where they first encountered it, the way one indelibly recalls the loss of virginity.
Praise for Kerouac's work is far from universal. Many academics, critics and other writers dismiss him as a primitive and pretender, his writings merely ramblings of a drunken bum, and already are expressing displeasure at his being included as an author worthy of the high-brow Library of America collection. Truman Capote, an early inductee into the series, famously scoffed of Kerouac's prose, "It isn't writing. It's typing." But like his detractor, "On The Road" and Kerouac's other books have withstood the great test of time.
It has been known for decades Road was begun in 1948. Rough draft segments of Road are found in Kerouac's journals he kept since a youngster in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, now collected and edited by Brinkley in the recent book "Windblown World".
Before the long-delayed publication of "On The Road" in 1957, what commonly is referred to as the full "first draft" was typed out at 100 words a minute during three weeks in April 1951 on a 120-foot length of paper often called a "teletype roll". It is one long, single-spaced, unbroken paragraph. Some say Kerouac wrote it on a Benzedrine binge; others point to a letter Kerouac wrote to Cassady saying it was just "coffee" that fueled his mind. While there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that speed really was the driving factor, in the end, this is just more pieces of minutiae and trivia permeating the Kerouac mythology, and really doesn't seem to matter.
In 2001, the original scroll was purchased at a Christies' auction in New York by Indianapolis Colts owner James Irsay for $2.43 million, a world record for a manuscript. After his successful bid, the following day Irsay allegedly was offered twice the price for it, and has said that he was prepared to pay as much as $10 million.
A good friend of Brinkley, Irsay dispatched his private jet to pick him up and accompany him to the auction as an "advisor". Irsay helped organize an extensive tour of the scroll, now encased in a long glass topped and sided table, with the scroll unfurled several feet and connected to two adjacent Torah-like cylinders which curators may occasionally carefully wind to reveal another segment of the text. It has been restored by adding backing and treating the front with a preservative. After a final tour date in 2009, Irsay plans to donate it to Lilly Library at the University of Indiana.
The "scroll" has hundreds of hand-written edits by Kerouac and many sections of lines deleted by cross-outs. John Sampas, Kerouac's literary executor, told MSNBC these would not be included in Viking's "uncensored" release. The original famous opening line of "On The Road" stating Kerouac first met Moriarty soon after Kerouac separated from his wife appears in Scroll recounting he first met Cassady after the death of Kerouac's father. The actual scroll ends abruptly, without the long, haunting Wolfeian paragraph closing the novel, pertaining to unsuccessful searches for Neal Cassady's father in Denver. The scroll was entrusted to his friend Lucien Carr for safekeeping, and Carr's dog chewed up the end. "Original Scroll" appendages a supposition of several pages in an effort to complete the manuscript and show its last words were close to the 1957 first edition. This was written by editor Howard Cunnell and is somewhat a leap of faith.
Sampas has claimed Viking's 1957 "censorship" was due to explicit references to sex and drugs. The "F" word was scratched out by Kerouac on the first page of the scroll text but interestingly does appear in The Original Scroll, although Sampas averred scratch-outs would not be included. The scroll was published despite potential libel problems involving characters' real names. Cassady and Ginsberg signed releases for their pseudonymous inclusion in Road. Neal Cassady's wife, Carolyn, who did not, lives in Great Britain, where libel verdicts are easier to obtain, and angrily denounced as a "travesty" plans to publish the scroll.
Four Kerouac scholars put Original Scroll together. Cunnell filled gaps and made calls on original deletions, corrected spelling, inserted paragraph breaks, and edited it for a more cohesive read. Cunnell, Joshua Kupetz, Penny Vlagopoulus and George Mouratidis wrote superbly insightful introductory background material and analysis, the book's first 97 pages.
An enduring question about the scroll concerns whether it actually was typed onto teletype paper. There are arguments for and against this. Carr, a news editor at New York's United Press International bureau, supplied Kerouac with teletype paper in the early 1950s. Some say the "scroll" was taped together in 12-foot segments.
Scroll examiners including Cunnell say portions of it have a scored line down one side, suggesting it may have been hand-ruled and cut to fit the platen of Kerouac's typewriter, indicating it was not teletype paper. However, Cunnell in Original Scroll also makes some errors, not the least of which is that the Burroughs house in Algiers was located next to a bayou. In fact it is about two blocks from the river and miles from the nearest bayou.
Brinkley in "Windblown World" acknowledges Carr gave Kerouac teletype paper, but refers to the scroll as "Japanese art tracing paper". In a 1979 New York Times article, Cassady biogarhper ("Holy Goof") William Plummer wrote that Kerouac "fed into his typewriter a bulky roll of Chinese art paper". The paper used also has been referred to variously as onion-skin, "nearly translucent", and as architectural drafting paper. Kerouac told fellow beat writer John Clellon Holmes that he planned to write the manuscript on "a roll of shelf paper."
In her bitter "Nobody's Wife", (2000), Kerouac's second wife Joan Haverty quotes him saying "'See what I found in that cabinet over there? This whole big roll of paper the same width as typing paper.'"
Gerald Nicosia's critical biography "Memory Babe" states Kerouac found "20-foot sheets of Japanese art paper" in the same apartment Kerouac shared with Haverty - whose previous tenant was her friend Bill Cannastra, beheaded in a subway accident. The apartment was in the same building as that of Carr. This may be Brinkley's "Japanese art paper" postulation source. Cunnell maintains the roll was taped together from eight pieces of very thin sheets owned by Cannastra.
After Kerouac presented the scroll to publisher Robert Giroux in 1951, unfurled it in his office and exclaimed "Here's my novel!" Giroux was shocked by the one long unbroken single-spaced paragraph and rejected it outright. Startled by the format and complaining printers would not be able to compose from it, Giroux said it "felt rubbery, like Thermo-fax paper."
The back dust jacket photo of "Scroll" shows Kerouac holding long, unfurled footage of a paper roll, connected to a large roll of paper, clearly not taped together. The book speculates that Kerouac used this particular roll for his second novel, The Dharma Bums.
The Road scroll now is yellowed with age the way foolscap or newsprint-type teletype paper degrades quickly due to acid content. While this continuing literary mystery deserves proper forensic examination, in the end, it too, really doesn't matter.
"On The Road: The Original Scroll" is well worth buying and reading, and ultimately, may appear to some (as initially it did to me) to be a better, more contextually significant book than "On The Road" as published that fateful day of September 5, 1957. The astute introductions alone are worth the price of admission and provide a rich history of the several drafts of the book ultimately published as Road. Reading the actual scroll text is a revelation worthy of the long wait and lends great insight into the factual material of the evolution of the subsequent drafts.
But after reading "Scroll", more than 35 years after I first encountered "Road", in re-reading the text of the common edition as we know it today, my feelings remain quite mixed. True died-in-the wool fans will undoubtedly at some point place both books next to each other so they can plainly see the differences. Read more ›
68 of 76 people found the following review helpful
By John Woods
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Somehow I imagined the scroll to be an incomprehensible mess that editors had to sift through in order to create something that could be published as a novel. I was very far from the truth.
The Original Scroll is an example of excellent writing. Yes, it's missing paragraphs, but the style is sharp like a knife's edge. Kerouac's text has power to concentrate reader's imagination and then send it flying into a thousand of directions at once.
I think I actually prefer the scroll to the classic editions of On the Road. The scroll feels very real and easy to understand.
The Original Scroll is an example of excellent writing. Yes, it's missing paragraphs, but the style is sharp like a knife's edge. Kerouac's text has power to concentrate reader's imagination and then send it flying into a thousand of directions at once.
I think I actually prefer the scroll to the classic editions of On the Road. The scroll feels very real and easy to understand.
51 of 57 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
On the Road - the original road trip. The book that took the Beat movement mainstream and fused literature and the youth culture inextricably in the 50s and 60s - presented here as the legendary scroll manuscript Kerouac initially produced. It's readable and electric. The act of reading this familiar and envigorating story anew makes it fresh again. The differences are small (in the scroll Kerouac uses real names instead of of the pseudonyms used in the published novel; the scroll is sexier and feels a bit edgier and more breathless) - but enough to make me experience it in a raw new way. Kerouac's quest for Cassady is a story that puts me in touch with what life's all about: freedom, friendship, creativity, partying, love - and the wanderlust questing nature of the human soul. It's never been more needed - or more pertinent.
This is a great way to reconnect with this great classic. If you've never read it, I wouldn't hesitate to read this over the published one. This version makes it easier to reconnect the novel's/memoir's action with history. Highly recommended
This is a great way to reconnect with this great classic. If you've never read it, I wouldn't hesitate to read this over the published one. This version makes it easier to reconnect the novel's/memoir's action with history. Highly recommended
Most Recent Customer Reviews
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Published 13 days ago by Flavio S. Armony
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On the road review
So, what to say about this. Having read and enjoyed The Dharma bums I came to this expecting a certain amount of goodliness. Read more
So, what to say about this. Having read and enjoyed The Dharma bums I came to this expecting a certain amount of goodliness. Read more
Published 13 days ago by David Leonard
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Review of On the Road by Jack Kerouac (spoiler alert)
Holy hell on wheels, Dean Moriarty. Read more
Holy hell on wheels, Dean Moriarty. Read more
Published 16 days ago by robert mitchell
2.0 out of 5 stars
Typos in Kindle Edition
This Kindle edition contains many typographical errors. For the money spent on a Kindle and the book itself, you'd think Amazon would have some investment in making sure Kindle... Read more
Published 20 days ago by Steven Gomes
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quick shipment and great condition.
I have been a Jack Kerouac fan for years, having listened to his radio show. I am looking forward to this read.
Published 21 days ago by MaryK
5.0 out of 5 stars
On the Road review
I enjoyed the book a lot ... but it took some time before I began to understand why it is regarded as such a classic. Read more
Published 22 days ago by John W Newton
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic
On the Road is a true Icon in American literature. Your education is incomplete if you haven't read it yet.
Published 25 days ago by Joe Bauman
2.0 out of 5 stars
Overrated
I kept thinking something would happen, and it never did.
Historically interesting at times, but all in all, a pretty boring read.
Historically interesting at times, but all in all, a pretty boring read.
Published 25 days ago by B. Caldwell
1.0 out of 5 stars
Torture To Read
Can't believe my professor made us read this piece of bunk. It is like reading through the diary of a stoner bum. A flat line, the plot was visible from page one. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Arin
