For Immediate Release: March 7, 2006
Contact: Sherri Eng (415) 557-4282
seng@sfpl.org
Final Weeks of On the Road Manuscript Exhibition
Jack Kerouac scroll leaves Main Library on March 19
Thousands of literary buffs, tourists, aspiring writers and library users have paid homage to Jack Kerouac’s original manuscript of his classic Beat novel On the Road since its arrival to the Main Library on Jan. 14.
The exhibition will close March 19 and the scroll will head to Macalester College in Minnesota before continuing on to Denver; Lowell, Mass.; and New York City, among others.
The manuscript, on loan from the private collection of Indianapolis Colts football team owner James S. Irsay, is comprised of eight long strips of paper pasted together to form a scroll measuring 119 feet, 8 inches.
Kerouac was known as a “lightning typist” and he constructed the scroll to be fed into a typewriter so that his typing and narrative would not be interrupted by the need to change paper. He wrote the groundbreaking
work in 20 days in 1951 employing “spontaneous prose,” a nonstop, unedited style inspired by letters from his friend, Neal Cassady. The scroll contains various pencil markings, crossouts and lines throughout, and
the end is tattered – thanks to the dog of Kerouac’s friend, Lucien Carr, some say.
Thirty-six feet of the original manuscript is on display, along with an overview of Kerouac’s life, other works and a brief history of the Beat movement, told through photos, books and ephemera in the Jewett Gallery at the Main Library.
On the Road charts the adventures of two young men, the narrator Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, whose characters were based on Kerouac and Cassady. Two other characters, Carlo Marx and Old Bull Lee were based
on Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. Their travels to American small towns, cities, and the desert convey the experiences of 1950s outsiders deviating from the materialism and conformity of the era.
In their search to live life to the fullest and to find personal freedom, they explore sex, drugs and jazz.
Kerouac’s other works include Big Sur, Visions of Cody, Doctor Sax, Maggie Cassidy, The Subterraneans, Tristessa, Desolation Angels, Visions of Gerard and The Dharma Bums.
Final week closing program:
The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour
Bill Morgan, author of The Beat Generation in San Francisco, provides a virtual “walking tour” of Beat homes and haunts in San Francisco. Co-sponsored by City Lights Books.
March 14, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Main Library, Lower Level, Koret Auditorium,
100 Larkin St. (at Grove)
The exhibition and program are free and open to the public.
For more information, please call (415) 557-4282.
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