I’ve never been enough of a fan that I felt the need to genuflect, but I did feel something seeing the original On The Road scroll laid out like a giant Beat Torah at the New York Public Library. Their Kerouac show manages not to beat the dead horse of hero worship – it present Kerouac not as saint or divinator or anything else other than a writer. That was my biggest takeaway: yes, the first full draft of On The Road was written on a huge roll of taped-up typewriter paper in a compressed amount of inspired time — but prior to that, Kerouac did his homework. He took notes, sketched out characters, figured out plot points. Dude was not receiving radio signals from Shiva, he worked at his craft.
On The Road, if I dare say it, is one of those texts that is far cooler as a milestone in culture than the thing itself. Like Duchamp’s urinal, like Easy Rider, like, God help us, Slap Shot (yes, I’m being serious.) But seeing it laid out there — pretty frickin’ cool, I gotta say.
