Before Jack Kerouac’s famed On The Road manuscript goes on sale in New York next week, European fans of the Beat icon were able to catch a glimpse of the original text when it was briefly placed on display in Geneva on Tuesday. Kerouac wrote the landmark novel on a nearly 120-foot-long scroll of onionskin paper he pieced together from 12 ten foot-long sheets.
Christie’s of New York expects the document, complete with original pencil marks and blotted-out lines, to fetch $1.5 million when it goes under the gavel this Tuesday.
After several failed attempts at writing an essentially autobiographical account of his cross-country travels with confidante Neal Cassady, Kerouac developed a new technique to record his thoughts. “He began to rethink his approach to writing and had the idea of the scroll as a way to free up his creativity, without editing his ideas, without being literary – just a typed stream of consciousness and no contrivance,” says Chris Coover of Christie's. “This is a very exciting original.”
One fan who saw the scroll in San Francisco earlier this month agreed: “It’s like the Holy Grail, the Rosetta stone and the shroud of Turin all rolled into one.”
The record for a literary manuscript sold at auction was set in 1920 when a script of Franz Kafka’s The Trial went for nearly $2 million in 1988.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
