Off the Road

I went down to the Main Library today to check out the original first draft of Jack Kerouac's classic On the Road. Jack wrote the original in a twenty-day-long amphetamine boost, single-spaced, on one scroll of paper through a typewriter. Basically it looks like the Torah (which, many might argue, is an apt parallel as On the Road is considered by some to be a Bible of literature).

What's amazing is that 99% of this draft made it through to the final, AND there are NO TYPOS! I can't even write a thank you note without making mistakes. That kind of attention to detail while buried in a blaze of drugs is pretty sensational. Not to mention creating a classic, generation-defining novel at the same time.

I also stumbled in on a little introductory lecture, where various professors told stories about the San Francisco good ol' days, when artists could actually afford to live here. Apparently On the Road became a hit largely because of the incredible review it received down at the NY Times (hardly the first time that's happened). The main critic was heading out of town, so, in a stroke of unadulterated luck, he gave the book to the paper's jazz critic to review. The jazz critic, who jived with the freeflow prose, called it a defining book and Kerouac blew up; however, later on that week a literary critic published a second review in the Times that called it dangerous to the youth of America, and almost all subsequent reviews panned it. Clearly, they didn't matter much.

I haven't actually read On the Road -- I started listening to the booktape years ago with my pops but it was hard to follow and we quit. Reading the scroll it was a lot easier to follow (I could reread), and I was hooked; it'll be read as part of the 50 book challenge! (On book #5 at the moment, more to come...)