How important for some of us to be able to read the “On The Road” novel in its original draft, the legendary scroll typewritten in thick tracing paper (a continuous, one hundred twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper sheets that he cut to size) without any paragraph break or whatsoever, taped together by Jack Kerouac to form a figurative road in its entirety, the result of Jack’s “spontaneous prose” fueled by one long arduous burst of creativity spanning 3 weeks in April of 1951.
The legendary first draft of “On The Road” - “rougher, wilder and racier than the 1957 edition”. The original scroll wherein the real characters were named; Carlo Marx is Allen Ginsberg, Dean Moriarty is Neil Cassady and of course Sal Paradise being Jack Kerouac.
What’s special about this “original scroll” edition was the accompanying introductions written by people who have long studied Jack Kerouac as a writer and who have done detailed research about the story behind the creation of “On the Road”. Here, we will read letters written by Kerouac to friends, narrating his visions for a novel that will highlight and point the road, but at times struggling to gather ideas for a novel he yearned to be told. From dead ends in terms of plots, to his own struggles with finding his own style of writing, readers will rejoice as we were taken to a time both prior and during the time when Kerouac eventually found the groove that “sustained (that) burst of creative energy” that produced one of literature’s influential novel of all time.
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