shit, money, and the Word

[Musashi Miyamoto]

I have a photo of the (sc)roll; positively talmudic.

HenryM

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <DMillison at ftmg.net>
To: "Pynchon-L (E-mail)" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 6:40 PM
Subject: shit, money, and the Word


>
> 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."
>
>