Books

Robert Giroux's personal copy of the famous scroll of Kerouac's masterpiece; this is likely the first ever reproduction of the 120-foot-long work. Giroux was Kerouac's first editor and the first person to whom Kerouac offered On the Road - he was also the first person to turn it down. It was eventually published by Viking in 1957. On the Road existed in various drafts across Kerouac's notebooks from the late 1940s. Kerouac finally determined to sit down and distill his novel in April 1951. He was frustrated by the necessity of pausing to change the sheets of paper in his typewriter, which interrupted his free and continuous prose style. His solution was to tape together sheets from an immense roll of teletype paper, which allowed him to type without pause. After three weeks of work, Kerouac had finished his masterpiece. The original scroll, prized as one of the great relics of literary history, was purchased in 2001 for $2,426,000 by the collector Jim Irsay and has since been exhibited in libraries and museums around the world, though its raw text was not available until Viking published a transcript in 2007. Giroux's manuscript annotations on the envelope specify that this is a duplicate of the original scroll. He writes "OTR original" and "scroll of paper" in blue ballpoint, with another contemporaneous hand remarking in green felt tip, "On The Road - Jack Kerouac, dup. of original". The frayed edges, taped portions, and Kerouac's manuscript edits to the original are all visible in this copy. Kerouac and Giroux met in 1949, and Giroux published Kerouac's debut novel, The Town and the City, the following year. The strait-laced "golden boy of publishing" suddenly found himself a father figure to a heavy-drinking, hitchhiking, dope-smoking poet, and recalled that "Jack saw himself as Thomas Wolfe... and me as [editor] Max Perkins" (quoted in Katchka). Giroux was editor-in-chief at Harcourt, Brace when Kerouac finished On the Road on 22 April 1951. Kerouac immediately took it to show Giroux, arriving at his editor's office in a celebratory mood. "The word stoned was not yet in use but there was something hyped up and frantic about his condition, and I thought him drunk," recalled Giroux. "He soon stood in my doorway with a big roll of paper under his arm, as fat as a kitchen paper-towel roll. He held one end and tossed it across my office like a long string of confetti, yelling, 'Here's my new book!'. Instead of congratulating him and taking him to a bar to celebrate, I foolishly said, 'Jack, don't you realize you'll have to cut this up for the printer. We'll need separate pages for editing, too.' He became red with rage and bellowed, 'The hell with editing! Not one word is to be changed. This book was dictated to me by the Holy Ghost!'. Over my protests he rolled up the paper and stormed out of the office and, I thought, out of my life" (cited by Kachka). Giroux's anecdote of the biggest miss of his career (aside from Catcher in the Rye) is a simplified version of events. He and Kerouac had long been in correspondence about the "Road" book, and Giroux had already seen and commented on early drafts. Kerouac's correspondence shows he took Giroux's advice to retype the work almost immediately, reworking On the Road into an editor-friendly format, on separate pages and divided into paragraphs and chapters. He sent Giroux a copy by 10 June, and Giroux returned it with a polite rejection on the 24th. Photocopying processes such as Xerox were commercially available in America from the late 1940s, and Giroux would have had access to such machines at Harcourt, Brace & Co. The first three leaves are hand-numbered in red ink at the head, possibly in Giroux's hand, with a handful of minor ink underlinings to the first few leaves (five annotations in all). These perhaps witness Giroux's first attempt at reading On the Road. Accompanying this copy is a later handwritten note dated 18 September 1972, "Mr. Giroux: Thank you very much for lending me the On the Road MS, Yours, Aaron Latham". Latham was the journalist and screenwriter known for his films Urban Cowboy (1980) and Perfect (1985). In 1979 he was working on a biography of Kerouac and in 1998 on a book on the Beat generation (neither of which materialized). His play Birth of Beats: Murder and the Beat Generation debuted in April 2012 in New York. READ MORE Together 135 photocopied leaves (355 x 217 mm), final leaf blank, first and last pages duplicated, in original manila folder. Loosely inserted is a single-leaf manuscript note from Aaron Latham to Giroux, dated 18 September 1972, written one side only. With original envelope. Housed in a black cloth flat-back box with chemise by the Chelsea Bindery. Tears at edges of toned envelope; contents in fine condition. Boris Kachka, Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America's Most Celebrated Publishing House, 2013.

Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel "On the Road" is an emblematic portrait of the Beat Generation, capturing the yearning for freedom and authenticity against postwar American conformity. This semi-autobiographical work, based on the adventures of Kerouac and his friends across America, is often seen as a defining work of the countercultural movements of the 1950s and 60s. It chronicles the cross-country voyages of Sal Paradise, Kerouac’s alter ego, and Dean Moriarty, a free-spirited, charismatic rebel. "On the Road" is structured around several trips made by Sal and Dean, describing their escapades as they travel back and forth across the country. These journeys are less about the destinations and more about the experiences they gather, the people they meet, and the quest for meaning in a society perceived as rigid and materialistic. The narrative style of the book, known for its spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness prose, mirrors the tumultuous, impulsive lives of its characters. The novel not only explores physical journeys but also personal and spiritual ones. Dean's frenetic energy and Sal’s introspective nature contrast sharply, yet both characters are united in their disdain for conventional values. They indulge in jazz, poetry, and drug use—exploring alternative forms of consciousness and relationships.