The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published as Kerouac
originally composed it
IN THREE WEEKS in April of 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his first full draft
of On the Road--typed as a single-spaced paragraph on eight long
sheets of tracing paper, which he later taped together to form a
120-foot scroll. A major literary event when it was published in Viking
hardcover in 2007, this is the uncut version of an American
classic--rougher, wilder, and more provocative than the official work
that appeared, heavily edited, in 1957. This version, capturing a moment
in creative history, represents the first full expression of Kerouac's
revolutionary aesthetic.
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