Kerouac's 'On the Road' hits the road in museum tour

By Ryan Lenz

	DARRON CUMMINGS / AP Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, talks about his purchase of the original manuscript of the first draft of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road." Irsay bought Kerouac's draft for $2.43 million and plans to send it on a 13-stop, four-year national tour of museums and libraries.
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Yellowed with age, smudged with editing marks and the author's own ink-covered fingerprints, the scroll rolls over nearly 120 feet of paper. It is a relic of a literary phenomenon.

Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay bought the scroll two years ago for $2.43 million. Now that it has been displayed in Indianapolis, Irsay plans to send what may be the Beat Generation's quintessential text back to the road where it came from.

Beginning this week at the Orange County History Center in Orlando, Fla., and ending with a three-month stay at the New York Public Library in 2007, Kerouac's "On the Road" scroll will make a 13-stop, four-year national tour of museums and libraries.

Kerouac scroll schedule Tour schedule for Kerouac's scroll of 'On the Road': 2004 Jan. 10 to March 21: Orange County History Center, Orlando, Fla. May 10 to June 25: Naropa University, Boulder, Colo. Sept. 15 to Nov. 30: Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wis. 2005 Jack Kerouac, shown here in an undated photo, is said to have written his critically acclaimed novel "On the Road" during a coffee-fueled typewriter marathon in 1951. Jan. 19 to March 31: University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa March 24 to May 15: Las Vegas Public Library, Las Vegas June to August: National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. Sept. 1 to Nov. 30: University of Texas, Austin, Texas 2006 Jan. 14 to March 19: San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco May 1 to July 31: Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, Indianapolis Aug. 15 to Nov. 15: Columbia College, Chicago 2007 Jan. 1 to March 31: Denver Public Library, Denver TBD: Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, N.M. Sept. 1 to Dec. 31: New York Public Library, New York

"My goal all along was to have it and share it with all those who want to see it, whether it's in this country or other countries," Irsay said in an interview.

Book hailed as a masterpiece

In a conversation with director Cameron Crowe and journalist Hunter S. Thompson after he bought the scroll, Irsay said they discussed the manuscript's continued relevance as a chronicle of American discovery.

Kerouac wrote the novel in a coffee-saturated, 21-day typewriter marathon at a friend's apartment in New York City in 1951.

When finally published six years later, it won critical acclaim as an unconventional masterpiece, defining a post-World War II generation of intellectual outlaws on an aimless odyssey across the American landscape.

But while some, including The New York Times, praised its publication, others dismissed it.

"That's not writing. That's typing," author Truman Capote said in a review of Kerouac's book.

"It's the way that it was written that, in many ways, is more important than what it really is," said Howard Collinson, director of the University of Iowa Museum of Art, which will show the entire scroll in 2005. "That it kind of just spewed out of him is what it's all about."

When Kerouac died, his estate was reportedly valued at less than $100. The scroll passed hands and wound up in the New York Public Library.

It's a storied life for a rough draft of a classic, said Steven Taylor, chair of writing and poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo.

"There's a long, long tradition of displaying literary artifacts that are treasured," said Taylor, who collaborated with beat poet Allen Ginsberg on numerous projects. "But the stream of consciousness, jump-cut, rapid motion of the book will not be as strange as it was to readers a generation ago."

Kerouac was a star football player in Lowell, Mass., during high school and played briefly at Columbia University in New York. But Irsay is a businessman.

Still, buying the scroll and sending it on tour has little to do with profit, he said. Some museums are paying only a minor fee to display the scroll, mostly to cover the cost of shipping.

"It certainly wasn't something where I'm going to buy this because someday it will go up in value or I'm going to buy this because I want to sit and look at it," Irsay said. "I was drawn toward it."

Steward for the scroll

Irsay, a guitarist with a liking for Bob Dylan, helped produce "Colors," a tribute to Ryan White, a boy with AIDS whose legal struggle to attend a school in Indiana became a national cause in 1985; White died in 1990 at the age of 18.

Irsay inherited the Colts in 1997 when his father passed away. At 44, he is the NFL's youngest team owner.

The scroll, which was once thought to have been stored in a dorm room closet, exchanged hands often after Kerouac's death in 1969.

It had been part of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library until the 2001 auction, which was held to pay for debts in Kerouac's estate.

But as frequently as the scroll passed hands during its 53 years, Irsay, who thinks of himself more as the steward for the scroll than its owner, said perhaps it is fitting for it to leave him.

"Possessions I hold very lightly, in the sense that they're kind of like very temporary borrowings," he said. "This will be someone else's and someone else's."

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