On the road

This is the original scroll: the first ever publication of Kerouac's original draft for the book - transcribed from the famous 'scroll': hundreds of typed pages which constitute the manuscript taped together by Kerouac himself. "On the Road" chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance.

On the Road, Jack Kerouac's whirling, swirling celebration of the generation we call Beat, was first published in 1957, by The Viking Press in the States, and André Deutsch in the UK. To celebrate its fiftieth birthday, we're publishing the unexpurgated scroll for the first time, in a beautiful hardback edition that is absolutely exquisite. Legend has it that Kerouac wrote the novel in a fury of movement: fuelled by caffeine and cigarettes, he typed this magisterial work on a series of pieces of paper, taped together to make a rudimentary `scroll', flowing down the page, unstoppable, rather like the energetic road trip he and his friend, Neal Cassady, took across America, and that he documents in the novel.

For the first time, you can finally read exactly what Kerouac wrote - the edition we all know and love was strongly edited, to excise the more racy bits that were deemed to be too strong meat for the `50s crowd. References to sex and drugs - though not entirely expunged - were toned down and tempered. The text was chopped up into neat paragraphs, to be easy on the eye. But now you can read the full, out-of-breath paean to the heady joys of living with the wind in your hair and only a dollar in your pocket.

In the New York Times, Luc Sante writes that `The novel that "On the Road" became was inarguably the book that young people needed in 1957, but the sparse and unassuming scroll is the living version for our time.' Too right. If you haven't read the scroll yet, I envy you hugely.

Författare: Jack Kerouac; (Jack Kerouac with an introduction by Ann Charters.)
Genre: Autobiographical fiction., Roman, Fiction., Självbiografiska skildringar
Språk: Engelska

Förlag	År	Ort	Om boken	ISBN
Penguin Classics, an imprint of Penguin Books	2022	Storbritannien, London	280 sidor	978-0-241-55264-3
Penguin Books Ltd.	2018	Utgivningsland okänt / Ej specificerat	280 sidor 18 cm	978-0-241-34795-9
Penguin Books	2016	USA, New York	307 sidor 20 cm	978-0-14-312950-9
	2012	Utgivningsland okänt / Ej specificerat		978-0-14-312028-5
Penguin Books	2011	England, London	280 sidor. 19 cm.	978-0-241-95153-8
Pearson Longman	2008	England, Harlow	vii, 78 sidor. 20 cm.	978-1-4058-8246-0
Viking	2007	New York, New York	408 sidor. 24 cm.	978-0-670-06355-0, 0-670-06355-X
Penguin	2007	England, London	408 sidor.	978-1-84614-020-4, 978-0-14-118921-5
The Library of America, Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Putnam	2007	USA, New York, N.Y	864 sidor. 21 cm.	978-1-59853-012-4
Pearson education	1999	Storbritannien, Harlow	73 sidor.
Penguin	1998	Storbritannien, London	290 sidor. 18cm
Viking	1997	USA, New York	307 sidor.	0-670-87478-7
Penguin books	1976	USA, New York	307 sidor.	978-0-14-004259-7
Penguin	1991	Storbritannien, Harmondsworth	310 sidor.
Penguin	1979	USA, Harmondsworth	xvii, 605 sidor.	0-14-015511-2
Penguin	1976	USA, New York	310 sidor.	0-14-015219-9
Penguin	1972, pr. 1975	Storbritannien, Harmondsworth	290 sidor.
	1968	Storbritannien, London	310 s
Viking Press	1957, pr. 1960	USA, New York	310 sidor.
Deutsch	1958	Storbritannien, London	310 sidor.
	1958	USA, New York
	1957	, New York
Penguin	2000	Storbritannien, London	xxxii, 280 sidor.	978-0-14-118267-4