Thursday, July 05, 2007

How On the Road was created, edited and sold

"All Things Considered" today has a story about the genesis (and exodus) of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, probably one of the ten most famous and influential novels of the 20th century. A nice long print (i.e. not audio) story is here, and that page contains a link to an even more "in-depth feature," as well as video of the famous 120-foot-long scroll typescript.

The piece includes usually not-discussed information about how Kerouac got an agent for the manuscript and how the agent and the eventual editors at Viking dealt with the unweildy book.

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