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On the Road was Jack Kerouac's second novel to be published. Along
with Ginsberg's Howl and Burroughs' Naked Lunch, it would serve as
the foundation for a movement that became known as the Beat Generation. Of
course, it was Herbert Hunke who first brought the term 'beat' to the attention
of Kerouac and his friends in the late 40's, and it would be John Clellon
Holmes' book Go that would first use the term 'beat.' Ann Charters writes,
"The young people who responded to the book recognized that Kerouac was on their
side, the side of youth and freedom."
The history of the publication of On The Road has been legendary, most of it
true. The cross country trips that Kerouac recounts took place in the late 40's.
Kerouac wrote the first version of On the Road in 1948, shortly after
having finished the manuscript for The Town and the City.
In 1950 Kerouac received a letter from Cassady and "seeing how good old Neal
Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional,
completely serious, all detailed," Kerouac started developing his own style that
coupled Cassady's madcap style with that of another friend, architect Ed White, who
suggested that Kerouac sketch events, like an artist sketches a scene.
Kerouac starting writing in amphetamine supported binges that would last for
days in a style that he would eventually call spontaneous writing.
He started on the famous scroll on April 2, 1951, and by April 22 was
finished. The scroll was made up of 12-foot long sheets of tracing paper (there
is still some debate over what paper was used) that
were taped together into one long continuous roll that he fed into the
typewriter so that he wouldn't have to stop to change pages and possibly lose
the moment that he was tying to capture. That effort resulted in a continuous
scroll was 120 feet long, single spaced.
Sal Paradise and
Dean Moriarty are born
It would take years before Viking would agree to publish the book. One of
Viking's concerns was possible libel suits, so Kerouac gave the characters of
the book fictitious names when the novel was finally
published, and
obtained signed releases from Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg.
Its publication date was September 5, 1957, and it sold so well that there
was a second printing on September 20, and a third printing ordered shortly
afterwards. There were many negative reviews at the time, but word of mouth
helped On the Road make the best-seller list for five weeks late in 1957
getting as high as number 11. Kerouac had quietly written 16 other unpublished
books by that time.
Viking reports that On the Road has sold over 3 million copies, and is
selling over 60,000 copies a year. It was translated into over 25 languages. And
it shows no sign of slowing down.
Update:
It is now 50 years since the original publication of On The Road.
The book is on the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books.
The scroll
is on a nationwide tour after being sold at auction
on May 22, 2001 to Jim Irsay for $2.2 million (plus
buyer's premium) at Christies Auction House in New York City.
On the 50th
anniversary (2007), the original scroll version of On The Road
was finally published by Viking, using the real names of the characters.
Almost every
Kerouac title is in print. The 'beats' may have finally been accepted by
literary academia, posthumously of course. There are now a multitude of
college courses, symposiums, and Literary events about Kerouac and the
beats.
Check out the
Kerouac Calendar to see if there is something you might be interested
in.
Links:
On the Road
Scroll sells at auction
Reviews of On the Road (from 1957)
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 I first met Dean not long after my wife and I
split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk
about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and
my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the
part of my life you could call my life on the road.
From the beginning of On the Road... the book that
established Jack Kerouac as an icon... the spokesman for the Beat Generation...
that validated his countless hours of writing... that justified the hundreds of
thousands of words that he had typed late into the night... that finally allowed
the world to recognize him as a writer.
On September 5, 1957, while Eisenhower was President
(and Nixon Vice-president), Gilbert Millstein declared in his New York
Times book review of
On the Road:
There are sections of "On the Road" in which the writing is of a
beauty almost breathtaking. There is a description of a cross-country automobile
ride fully the equal, for example, of the train ride told by Thomas Wolfe in "Of
Time and the River." There are details of a trip to Mexico (and an interlude in
a Mexican bordello) that are by turns, awesome, tender and funny. And, finally,
there is some writing on jazz that has never been equaled in American fiction,
either for insight, style or technical virtuosity. "On the Road" is a major
novel.
Office memo's from Viking dated as early as 10/22/53 from Helen K.
Taylor, a Viking senior editor said:
I heartily agree with you feeling that this is a "classic of our times." I
hope that we will get a book out of it that we will publish quietly and with
conviction.
...The book stirred me for two sets of reasons, operating concurrently.
First, Kerouac's bold writing talent: it's lavish, reckless, but for all its
rapid jitters and seeming carelessness, it is almost always effective. Moreover,
the effectiveness does not lessen, but builds an energy of its own that is
all-pervasive by the end of the book. The writing is a torrential force that
comes directly out of the material, instead of being applied to it. It is almost as if the author did not seem to exist as an outside agency of creation.
[Jack Kerouac: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Sources by Robert Milewski,
The Scarecrow Press, 1981]
On The Road Publication Information
On The Road (first edition) by Jack Kerouac Viking Press New York $3.95. Unknown number of Hardcover copies issued September 5, 1957
First paperback issued September 1958 by Signet books (D1619)
First British hardcover edition issued May 16, 1958 by Andre Deutsch
(3,000 copies).
First British paperback issued by Pan Books (Pan Giant X84) in
1961.
The On The Road original scroll US edition published on the 50th Anniversary (2007).
The 'official' 50th Anniversary edition (US).
Published Excerpts:
Parts of chapters 12 and 13, Book One, of On The Road appeared in
The
Paris Review #11 (Winter 1955) under the title The Mexican Girl (also reprinted
in The Best American Short Stories Of 1956 published by Houghton Mifflin in
1956).
Parts of chapters 10 and 14, Book Three, were
published in New World Writing #7
entitled Jazz of the Beat Generation (under the pseudonym Jean Louis).
An excerpt from chapter 5 in New Directions 16 entitled
A
Billowy Trip in the World, published July 5, 1957.
©
1997 DHARMA beat and Attila Gyenis |
