shit, money, and the Word

[Doug Millison]

http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id=1714
TOMORROW, CHRISTIE'S WILL offer to the highest bidder a typewritten scroll
of architectural drafting paper nearly one hundred twenty feet long, held
together by cellophane tape: perhaps the only bonafide "relic" of postwar
American literature, the mythical first draft of Jack Kerouac's On the Road
(estimated price $1 to $1.5 million). ...In keeping with the spiritual
underpinnings of the Beat movement, as well as with its ecumenical bent, the
conservators at Christie's have mounted the ungainly manuscript on two
plexiglass rollers -- a Torah-like arrangement that evokes a humbled
response in the viewer. It was Kerouac himself, of course, who first
presented the manuscript to the world as a sacred text, though in a
decidedly more democratic fashion: The opening segment of the scroll has
been damaged by frequent and enthusiastic handling, the product of ritual
unfurlings for Beat acolytes. A letter from Kerouac to Allen Ginsberg from
October 1, 1957 (just after the novel's triumphant publication) describes a
wild scene, fueled by Old Granddad, where the author -- flush with his
newly-minted celebrity -- rolls the scroll out on the carpet of a hotel room
for a throng of curious reporters. Then, as now, nothing appealed to the
arbiters of culture quite as much as "authenticity."