Paper Road.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul
• Position: Jack Kerouac's original manuscript for The on the Road novel, on sale - Brief Article

Above is America's most famous manuscript: Jack Kerouac's continuous, 120-foot-long typescript for his 1957 classic On the Road, auctioned by Christie's in May. According to Beat folklore, Kerouac wrote the novel in a three-week white heat, fueled by benzedrine, coffee, and pea soup. Taping long sheets of paper together to avoid interruption, Kerouac sought to celebrate Romantic intensity not only in his work, but by his method as well.

The scroll has attained near-mythic status, with many versions of its history and even many claims about its material (tracing paper? teletype paper? oilskin? shelf paper?). It is a central exhibit of midcentury American culture, a period that scholar Daniel Belgrad has termed "the culture of spontaneity."

Shake Kerouac's great scroll, and out falls a succession of improvisational innovators: dancers like Merce Cunningham, painters like...