Once inside, I’d present my credentials and turn over my belongings, then let the librarian know which documents I wanted to view. That year I was granted access to the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library, where some of the English language’s most important archives are housed, including Kerouac’s.Īt the end of a hushed hallway on the third floor of that imposing building on Fifth Avenue, I’d ring a bell and wait to be let in. Few events in literary history have captured the public imagination with such force.Īs a casual reader of Kerouac’s work, this was my understanding of On the Road, as well, when I began research on my book, Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, in 2013. Likely fueled by Benzedrine-although he claimed to have taken in nothing stronger than coffee-Kerouac wrote the novel as fast as he could think it, and in doing so defined a generation and helped solidify a nation’s love affair with the road trip. If you are so much as a leisurely fan of American fiction, you likely already know the story of how On the Road came into the world-how, in April 1951, the novel spewed forth from Jack Kerouac in an almost magical reverie that lasted a full three weeks of days and nights in a Chelsea loft, as he wrote without pause on a 120-foot-long scroll.
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