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JACK KEROUAC'S ORIGINAL 'ON THE ROAD' SCROLL TO BE AUCTIONED


May 15, 2001
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Before Jack Kerouac’s famed On The Road manuscript goes on sale in New York next week, European fans of the Beat icon were able to catch a glimpse of the original text when it was briefly placed on display in Geneva on Tuesday. Kerouac wrote the landmark novel on a nearly 120-foot-long scroll of onionskin paper he pieced together from 12 ten foot-long sheets.

Christie’s of New York expects the document, complete with original pencil marks and blotted-out lines, to fetch $1.5 million when it goes under the gavel this Tuesday.

After several failed attempts at writing an essentially autobiographical account of his cross-country travels with confidante Neal Cassady, Kerouac developed a new technique to record his thoughts. “He began to rethink his approach to writing and had the idea of the scroll as a way to free up his creativity, without editing his ideas, without being literary – just a typed stream of consciousness and no contrivance,” says Chris Coover of Christie's. “This is a very exciting original.”

One fan who saw the scroll in San Francisco earlier this month agreed: “It’s like the Holy Grail, the Rosetta stone and the shroud of Turin all rolled into one.”

The record for a literary manuscript sold at auction was set in 1920 when a script of Franz Kafka’s The Trial went for nearly $2 million in 1988.

Photo: © Alphapress.com
Christie's of New York expect the original onion-skin manuscipt of Kerouac's On The Road to fetch $1.5 million at auction
Photo: © Alphapress.com
The scroll is 120-ft long and made up of ten sheets which Kerouac stuck together

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