Welcome Back, Jack Kerouac. . .


All Things Considered, July 5, 2007 ·


This September marks 50 years since Jack Kerouac's On the Road hit bookshelves, stirred controversy and spoke — in a new voice — to a generation of readers. Today the beat travelogue continues to sell 100,000 copies a year in the U.S. and Canada alone.


Legend has it that Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks, typing it almost nonstop on a 120-foot roll of paper. The truth is that the book actually had a much longer, bumpier journey from inspiration to publication, complete with multiple rewrites, repeated rejections and a dog who — well, On the Road wasn't homework, but we all know what dogs do.
But the scroll: That part's true. . .


(Click on the link above to read the full story...)

Comments

  1. Wow, that scroll looks like an important ancient document.

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  2. Where does one even *get* a 120-foot roll of paper? I guess I've been writing with a computer/keyboard setup for too long.

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  3. I love this site.
    Wow.
    But I can't stop thinking about that paper.
    If that were mine, it would have corrections all over it. I can't write a sentence without changing it. Every story I've written has become a prose poem. Once a plum, now a little prune . . .
    I'd love to be able to write without revising . . . to write like a madwoman . . .

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