MANUSCRIPT GOES ON THE ROAD

This book and it's author had a huge influence on me when I was young.

Jack Kerouac's original manuscript-on-a-scroll for his novel On the Road has toured 11 cities since 2004, and today it lands at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Mass., for a golden anniversary celebration (through Oct. 14; ontheroad.org). From there, it heads to the New York Public Library (Nov. 9-Feb. 22). Stops for 2008 include Austin (March 7-May 31); Indianapolis (July 1-Sept. 30); and Chicago (Oct. 3-Nov. 30).

When Kerouac set out to record his impressions of several cross-country trips he made in the late 1940s, he typed them single-spaced and without paragraphs on a 9-inch-wide scroll. It was made from 12-foot-long strips of semi-translucent paper that were taped together so they could be fed into the typewriter without interruption. At the end of his marathon three-week writing session in spring 1951, the scroll had grown to nearly 120 feet long. The work was revised several times and finally published in September 1957 by Viking Press.

In 2001, the scroll was auctioned off for $2.43 million to Indianapolis Colts owner James Irsay, who authorized the tour.