on the road

on the road
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

The SF Public Library has Kerouac's original On The Road manuscript on display. It's a 119 foot scroll of typing, no paragraphs. He just stuck one end of the paper in and started typing. That's what Truman Capote said about Kerouac -'That's not writing , that's typing.' Umm, that's typing on speed.
The library also has some blow-up photos of the real life characters that populate the book. People like Lucien Carr, Hubert Huncke, Ginsberg, Cassady, and Mr. William Seward Burroughs of the Burroughs Adding Machine family, seen here in a clipping from a newspaper after he attempted, in Mexico, to shoot a glass off his wife Joan's head and missed. Missed badly.