Jack
Kerouac's hand-drawn cross-country road trip map from 'On the Road'
"Jack
Kerouac wrote On The Road in one feverish burst, letting it
pour onto pages taped together into one enormously long strip of paper – a
format he thought lent itself particularly well to his project, since it
allowed him to maintain his rapid pace without pausing to reload the typewriter
at the end of each page. When he was done, he marched into his editor Robert
Giroux's office and proudly spun out the scroll across the floor. The result,
however, was equal parts comical and tragic:
"To
[Kerouac's] dismay, Giroux focused on the unusual packaging. He asked,
"But Jack, how can you make corrections on a manuscript like that?...Jack, you know you have to cut this up. It has to
be edited." Kerouac left the office in a rage. It took several years for
Kerouac's agent, Sterling Lord, to finally find a home for the book, at the
Viking Press.""
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