On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [39]
The Neal of the scroll is, in comparison with the Dean of the published version, less mythologized, more human. Neal’s boyhood in Denver and his personal relationships—most notably those with Allen Ginsberg, Louanne Henderson, and Justin W. Brierly—are explained in more explicit detail, providing a broader context and background for Neal. The material omitted from the published version raises the profile of other characters in the story, lessening Neal’s centrality to the narrative action, especially that of Jack’s journey. He is still, however, conspicuous in his absence, with Kerouac’s compulsion early on in the scroll manuscript to “set the stage about Neal.” The resultant demystification of the Cassady character—when read against the published version—in turn changes the nature of the Kerouac figure’s relationship with the story’s authentic antihero to one that is more distant, one more dependent on physical absence, giving a more realistic impression of the unraveling personal relationship depicted in the narrative.
While the role of Denver D. Doll in the published version is marginal, that of its real counterpart in the scroll, Justin W. Brierly, is major, especially given his real-life relationship with Cassady. A highschool English teacher, lawyer, Realtor, and entrepreneur, Brierly was a prominent and well-connected Denver personality during the time the scroll was written. He was also Cassady’s one-time mentor and sponsor while Cassady was in the reformatory. Writing to Ed White on August 6, 1953, Kerouac refers to the scroll version of On the Road as “the novel in which Justin has big role, real big…I spose Cassady will sue.” Brierly presents a stronger link to Cassady’s actual past and private life, presenting them in greater depth. Neal’s failure as Brierly’s protégé, for instance, provides a context for the “war with social overtones,” alienating him from his Denver friends, something never properly explained in the published novel. While Neal’s status as an outsider is augmented by this displacement, it would not be until the published version that this outsider status would be fully mythologized.
The hindsight offered at various points throughout the scroll underscores a knowing acceptance of the failure of Jack’s vision of Neal, and so illuminates Jack’s problematic relationship with his own expectations and the ambivalent nature of his search for authenticity. Just as Kerouac wrote The Town and the City, as he said, to “explain everything,” in the scroll version we see the beginning of Kerouac’s explanation of Cassady and his significance. After completing the scroll, Kerouac attempted to rewrite the same story, but instead composed an entirely different book, a novel he would eventually and aptly title “Visions of Neal.”
In this new version of On the Road, which Kerouac began in May 1951, the mythologizing of Neal Cassady is increased while at the same time eventually becoming distinguished from Cassady himself. Corresponding with Cassady that October, Kerouac reassures him, “I am sending you these 3 now-typed-up-revised pages of my writing ROAD…to show you that ‘Dean Pomeray’ is a vision [emphasis added].” By April, 1952, Kerouac had completed yet another version of On the Road while staying with Cassady and his family in San Francisco. In a letter of May 18, 1952, Kerouac informs Ginsberg (also his literary agent at the time), “On the Road took its turn from conventional narrative survey of road trips etc. into a big multi-dimensional conscious and subconscious character invocation of Neal in his whirlwinds.” He even tells Ginsberg, “If necessary change the title to Visions of Neal or something.” Among numerous criticisms of this new version of On the Road in a June 11, 1952, letter to Kerouac, Ginsberg observes, “1. You still didn’t cover