On the Scroll again
| October 3rd, 2008
(photo by Steve Rhodes)
The fact that the original manuscript of On the Road is still making trips around the world and fulfilling an obligation to exhibitions of art, literature and culture is, in fact, a very good thing. That Jim Irsay—the owner of the scroll since 2001—actually lets it out of his sight for months at a time is a noble gesture, speaking volumes about the reasons that must have informed his decision to purchase it.
I have this idea that he bought it as a way to become a sort of patron saint to the Beats, like it was his responsibility to preserve a valuable historical artifact that just needed someone to bankroll it. So he stepped in, did what was necessary, and now sends his own personal objet d’art on its yearly pilgrimage around the world.
Now the scroll is stopping off at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts, the subject of not one, not two, but three exhibitions and a slew of related programming.
The first exhibition is a view of 36 feet of the scroll itself, which was produced in three weeks in 1951 on a manual typewriter in a New York loft. Kerouac had taped pieces of drafting paper together so they would pass continuously through his typwriter — 120 feet of paper in all, according to Jim Canary, special collections conservator for the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, the scroll’s home when it is not out gallivanting around. (The scroll will travel to England from Chicago.)
The second exhibition displays 66 covers from international editions ofOn the Road, collected by Kerouac scholar Horst Spandler. The third is “Experimental Literature and the Intersection with Artists’ Books,” which considers the scroll as an art object unto itself, and in the context of other books that push against the envelope.
(via Chicago Sun-Times)
