On the road

For some odd reason I decided I wanted to read some classic literature (other than the Bible - which is about as classic as it gets). After wandering around B & N for a brief eon, wondering when all these 'other' books arrived on the shelves, I finally went with Jack Kerouac's "On The Road." Me favorite son says it's his best, and one of THE best (the postmodern beat that he is). He offered to loan me his, but I tend to mark books up pretty bad, thinking someday I will return to the morsels for a snack, or add them in a stir-fry of sorts. So far I've only read the 27-page intro by Ann Charters out of my Penguin Classics copy. And this just so happens to be the 50th anniversary of its publication.

Supposedly 'On the Road' was typed out in one 3-week period in 1951. Kerouac didn't want to take time changing sheets of paper, so he either taped pages together or used teletype trimmed to fit (I'm not real sure about this), and the finished product was "a roll of paper typed as a single-spaced paragraph 120 feet long" (p.xix). This roll is still in existance, and for us hoosiers you will be interested to know that Jim Irsay - owner of the Indianapolis Colts - bought it in 2001 for $2.4 million. The roll was on display in sections at Indiana University's Lilly Library in mid-2003. In January 2004, the roll began a 13-stop, four-year national tour of museums and libraries. Who'd a thought.

You will find many different definitions and ideas on what a "beat" or "beatnik" is, but the intro to the book says (viii) Kerouac used to define a "beat" as: "...a state of exalted exhaustion, but which was also linked in Jack's mind to a Catholic beatific vision, the direct knowledge of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven." Apparently folks didn't like the religious derivation, so this explanation wasn't real popular.

One other interesting note: According to Wikipedia, at the time of Kerouac's death in 1969, his estate was worth little more than ninety-one dollars, but by 2004 it had grown to an estimated $20 million. That'll probably be my luck too. Ha!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading it. (Note to self: next read should be 'Pilgrim's Progress').