One great American down, dozens more to go

On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My dad bought me this for Christmas a couple of years ago because it was on my booklist. Of course, my dad being who he is (and I love him for it), he wasn't content to just get me the standard edition. He hunted down this newly released edition known as the "Original Scroll", which goes back to Kerouac's original manuscript. The manuscript is literally one long sheet of typewritten paper that rolls up into a scroll, and it contains the first draft of what would eventually be edited and rewritten into the novel known as On The Road.

Since I've never read the edited version, I can't truly compare it, but it seems that either Kerouac or his publishers edited out a large portion of the more scandalous sections of the book -- drinking, drugs, promiscuous sex... Especially the parts referring to encounters between two of the men Kerouac hung out with, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, who went on to be famous beat writers. But he also changed the names of several of the other people in the book, presumably to protect the privacy of his friends and family.

Something else that changed from the original scroll to the final version of the book was the formatting. It would seem that Kerouac sat down one day at his typewriter (with a bottle of gin and a disgusting amount of cigarettes, I'd imagine) and banged out the entire story in three sections. Each section is one paragraph that goes on for up to 50 pages. If you've ever read 'The Stone Angel' by Margaret Laurence and were totally frustrated by the stream-of-consciousness style, as I was when I read it at 17, you will likely DETEST the total lack of pacing and, at times, of punctuation.

That being said, there may have been an intentional choice made by Kerouac to keep the voice in a very informal narrative style. Maybe he wanted it to feel like you were at your local pub, and some crazy-looking disheveled guy with a backpack had randomly launched into an hours-long tale of his travels around the country. That guy wouldn't have structured his story like a novel, holding back certain details until the end. And he would most certainly have interrupted himself often, saying "Oh, I forgot to tell you about this part first--".

Or maybe I'm giving Kerouac too much credit as an author. I've never read his other works of fiction, so I can't say. But my instinct tells me not to assume he was simply vomiting his story onto the typewriter and letting it all trail down the page without reflection or purpose. Because there were themes and repetitive motifs throughout the scroll: the search for a lost or unknown father, the deluded optimism of someone searching for a place where they feel they belong, the infatuation that comes with making a new best friend or starting a new romantic relationship, the letdown that inevitably comes once the curtain falls from your eyes and you see people for who they truly are. There is also some of the more classic American Dream ideology here, with Kerouac describing his attempts to stay solvent and establish his family in a house that they own. But to me, this was much less the focus of the story than his search to find meaning in his relationships with other people.

For once, I'm not analyzing the book from a feminist angle. If I did, I would probably convince myself that I'd hated every character in it, including the women. But as it is, I'm glad I read it. I'm still not convinced that it should be considered a classic on the same level as other mid-century American novels ('The Great Gatsby'?) but it's worth reading just as a glimpse into the lives of some of those great writers.

Assuming Kerouac wasn't just making it all up, of course...