On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [50]
George Mouratidis would like to thank Kris Hemensley at Collected Works Bookshop for his expertise and passion, Gemma Blackwood for her Minervan presence throughout this project, and Garry Kinnane and Peter Otto for their illumination and encouragement. I would also like to thank my parents, Chris and Georgina, my brother John, Chris Ioannou, and Lucy Van for their constant support and understanding. Above all, a special thanks to my colleagues and friends Howard Cunnell, Joshua Kupetz, and Penny Vlagopoulos for their invaluable support, assistance, and inspiration.
Joshua Kupetz would like to thank Dan Terkla and colleagues Carol Ann Johnston, Wendy Moffat, and Robert Winston for their encouragement in teaching Kerouac in an “age of frivolous science.” I would also like to thank Michele Fleming, my mother, Tabatha Griffin, my sister, and Ty Dellinger for their unending faith. Without the support of Shana Ageloff-Kupetz, my wife, I would never have known how to finish this project, in particular, or where to begin, in general.
NOTE ON THE TEXT
The scroll manuscript has been edited with the intention of presenting a text that is as close as possible to the one Kerouac produced between April 2 and April 22, 1951.
The scroll is neatly typed and there are comparatively few mistakes for a manuscript of this length, let alone one written at the speed Kerouac was working at. Kerouac added handwritten corrections and revisions to the text as notes toward a revised draft. In a letter written to Neal Cassady on May 22, 1951, Kerouac writes, “Of course since Apr. 22 I’ve been typing and revising. Thirty days on that.” While it is not certain that Kerouac is referring here to the revisions he made on the scroll, and while Kerouac may have begun correcting the novel at any time, what is certain is that the corrections were added to a text he had typed first. I have stripped away these corrections and revisions and restored the lined-through typewritten text except in those places where the handwritten addition is the obvious missing word, most often a connective, in a typewritten sentence. I have not represented lines of text xxxxxx’d out by Kerouac. Dots (…) and dashes (---) are as they appear in the manuscript. Sometimes Kerouac uses four or two dots or dashes and this is shown.
I have corrected Kerouac’s spelling for comprehension purposes only. Throughout the scroll, Kerouac uses many abbreviations and compound words. I have left the abbreviations intact to convey something of the pace at which Kerouac was typing. For the same reason and because these words are part of the playful music of Kerouac’s prose, I have corrected only those compound words that appear accidental. Contrary to myth the scroll is for the most part conventionally punctuated. Uncorrected exceptions are Kerouac’s habit of leaving questions without a question mark and his absenting punctuation marks separating speaker from dialogue in passages of recorded speech.
Nearly forty years ago Sterling Lord reported to Kerouac that the manuscript seemed “brittle,” and there are a few places where the paper is torn. As might be expected these tears occur at the beginning of the text where the outside skin and first layers of the scroll are exposed and vulnerable. Most often the missing word or letter is obvious. In those very few instances where this is not the case, I have consulted Kerouac’s subsequent drafts and the published text.
And because it so beautifully suggests the sound of a car misfiring before starting up for a long journey, I have left uncorrected the manuscript’s opening line.
Howard Cunnell
Brixton, London, 2007
Dedicated to the memory of
Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg
Camerado, I give you my hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? Shall we stick to each other as long as we live?
—Walt Whitman
ON THE ROAD
The Original Scroll
I first met met Neal not long after my father died…I had just