Half
a century ago, the so-called Beat Generation of sometimes drug-fogged writers
and poets shocked the conformist sensibilities of postwar America. In On the Road, published 51 years
ago this Friday, college dropout Jack Kerouac embellished seven years of
spontaneous road trips with his colorful friends.
Kerouac
died at age 47 in 1969, his health destroyed by hard drinking. But now he is back in the public eye as
Penguin Books republishes two of his novels and an analysis of his influential
work.
In On
the Road: The Original Scroll, four scholars describe On The Road's
creation and present the text in its full and unvarnished original form. The first publishers had sanitized its
explicit sexual descriptions.
High
on amphetamines, according to many accounts – though he told interviewers he
completed On the Road in three weeks taking nothing stronger than coffee – Kerouac typed an uninterrupted stream of thought in single-space, with no
paragraphs, onto eight long sheets of tracing paper. Later, he taped them together to form what he called my
scroll. It was 37 meters long. The new
Penguin version is delivered in that same long gush with no paragraphs.
In
2001, the rolled-up script was purchased by the owner of the Indianapolis,
Indiana, professional American football team for almost $2.5 million.
Also
reappearing in the Penguin trilogy is Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums,
which contrasts his traveling buddies' vigorous outdoor hikes and climbs with
their languid city life of drinking and poetry reading.
The
final book, titled Why Jack Kerouac Matters, focuses on Sal Paradise,
the Kerouac character in On the Road.
In it, New York Times reporter John Leland writes that Kerouac
and other beatniks connected literature to ordinary people – the folk, as they
called them – just as rock-'n'-roll music helped wake up a complacent,
materialistic nation.
On the Road: The Original Scroll, The Dharma Bums, and Why Kerouac Matters are all published in paperback by Penguin Books.