A 120-foot burst of genius: Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ scroll and its wild afterlife

NEW YORK (AP) — In the spring of 1951, the muse landed so hard in the caffeinated mind of Jack Kerouac that within three weeks he had hurried out a full-length, single-spaced manuscript — a draft for “On the Road” that he taped together into a scroll some 120 feet long.

Published six years later to instant acclaim and notoriety, “On the Road” may not be the Great American Novel, but Kerouac’s epiphany surely stands as the Great American Manuscript.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-century achievement. In short, a literary singularity,” says the author and editor Gerald Howard.

Kerouac was among the novelists who embodied the mad American quest to “say it all,” to somehow capture the country’s spirit within a single narrative — the kind of epic ambition behind such canonical books as Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” In “On the Road,” the raw, wild energy that drove Kerouac to type down his thoughts as quickly as they came to him would inspire one of the defining tales of the post-World War II era — two young Beats out for adventure, for kicks, “desirous of everything at the same time.”

Howard says Kerouac had been working on the book for three years before his sudden inspiration. The 29-year-old author was in the Manhattan apartment of then-wife Joan Haverty, with rolls of architectural tracing paper that fit seamlessly into his manual typewriter.

“He realized that by feeding the paper in it would prevent him from having to change a sheet of paper over and over, which would pretty much guarantee a higher level of spontaneity,” Howard says.

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The scroll is now a piece of literary history, but it initially helped delay the novel’s release. His publisher, upon seeing Kerouac unfurl his draft, allegedly told him it couldn’t be edited. Kerouac stormed out.

Kerouac’s agent, Sterling Lord, spent years trying to attract interest in Kerouac’s jazzy, unorthodox tale before Viking signed it up, for an advance of $1,000. “On the Road” has since sold millions of copies and inspired countless literary — and literal — quests to “find America.” The manuscript itself has made several stops since Kerouac’s death in 1969. Earlier this year, country star Zach Bryan bought it from more than $12 million.

“Jack never called it a scroll,” notes Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia, adding that the author found the word too pompous. To Kerouac, he said, “it was like the white line of the highway unrolling in front of your front tire as you were speeding down the highway.”

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Hillel Italie has been writing about books for The Associated Press for more than 25 years. Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.