Famous Kerouac manuscript to be displayed

A portion of Jack Kerouac's On the Road manuscript will be put on display in San Francisco in the new year.

Eleven metres from the 36-metre manuscript will be on view at the Jewett Gallery of the San Francisco Public Library from Jan. 14 to March 19, 2006.  The retrospective of Kerouac's 1957 book will also include other books and pictures that detail his life and history of the Beat Generation.

Three lectures will complement the exhibit, touching upon Kerouac and other Beat Generation writers and poets such as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.  As well, the library will screen several films about the Beats.

On The Road is based on Kerouac's cross-country adventures with his friend Neal Cassady, fuelled by drugs, alcohol, sex and jazz.  He wrote the novel over a 20-day span in New York in 1951 on rolls of tracing paper taped together so he didn't have to stop and reload paper in his typewriter.

Kerouac's spontaneous style of writing, fed by coffee and the stimulant Benzedrine, captured his thoughts as quickly as they came to him. The novel featured characters, based on Kerouac and his friends, who eschewed the materialism and conformity of society.

On the Road was an instant cult hit, catapulting Kerouac to fame and sparking the beatnik movement, which in turn inspired the hippies of the 1960s.

Kerouac died from alcoholism in 1969.  Since then, the yellowed and brittle manuscript has changed hands several times.  Indiana Colt's owner Jim Irsay bought the scroll at a 2001 auction for $2.43 million.  Irsay is loaning a section to the library.