"It's one of the most mythic icons in American letters. The 120-foot long scroll on which Jack Kerouac hammered out the 1957 Beat Generation classic is coming to auction. The roll is arriving from the estate of Jim Irsay, the late owner of the Indianapolis Colts who amassed an unparalleled collection of music, sports, literary, and film relics over many years."
"Following Kerouac's death in 1969, the scroll passed from his widow Stella Sampas to her brother Tony Sampas. It was Tony's nephew, executor of his estate, who offered the artifact at auction in 2001-a sale that incurred the ire of Carolyn Cassady, the former wife of Neal. She deemed it "blasphemy" that the scroll could wind up in a private collection: "Jack loved public libraries," she insisted. "If they auction it, anybody rich could buy it and keep it out of sight.""
Kerouac composed the first draft of the novel during a feverish three-week period in spring 1951 by taping tracing paper sheets into a 120-foot scroll and typing the text as a single uninterrupted paragraph. The narrative follows Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty across America in a stream-of-consciousness style and later underwent revisions before publication in 1957, initially receiving middling reviews but ultimately becoming a Beat Generation touchstone. The scroll passed through family ownership, was sold at auction in 2001, bought by Jim Irsay who exhibited it publicly, and is now consigned to Christie's with a $2.5–$4 million estimate.
Read at Artnet News
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