Uncensored Version of ‘On the Road’

Head full of thoughts so I come downstairs wondering if Cleo got outside again and thus I’m shaking a little bag of treats by a window in the basement I’ve had proped open for a couple days (hoping she’d notice it and come back in you see) of course forgetting to close it again come morning when she’s already awoken both Heather and I to the sight of virgin dull color splatter behind the clouds before curling up into a ball between us above the covers just like she did in mama’s belly somewhere in Baltimore before coming to live with us a couple of years ago, but instead of that doing the trick (shaking a bag of treats in the basement where she couldn’t hear it) I park my kiester down here at the screen to see what’s going on in the tubes and in a minute she comes in from the screened in porch right in front of me so relief trickles it’s way down to these fingers half occupied with Cleo now nestled on my lap purring and the other ones taping the button that brings the screen to life with words and images all crammed through the tubes up and shouting at me like starving dockworkers in the 1920s begging for the chance to afford dignity on rye bread, dry with lettuce and tomato when something in particular smacks me so hard across the face my teeth wiggle…

Uncensored ‘On the Road’ to be published  

LOWELL, Mass. – Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” will be published in its unedited original scroll version by Viking Press, which published the Beat Generation classic in September 1957. John Sampas, executor of the writer’s literary estate and brother of Stella Sampas, Kerouac’s third wife, said he has signed a contract with Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group USA. He hopes the work will be out by the end of next year, the 50th anniversary of the publication.  “Incidents in the original were edited out of the published version because of the censorship of the time,” said Sampas, who noted that some of the edited sections refer to drugs and sex. (Well, we’ve come a long way in America in terms of those two subjects…a true sense of understanding and none of the widespread panic and fear over how both -if combined with hip music- could mean the end of civilization…or at least bring nigras and whites together for un-Godly purposes) “On the scroll, entire paragraphs are crossed out and not included in the published version.”  Sampras said the new version will be in book form, but taken from the original scroll. Any sections Kerouac had crossed out before turning it into the publisher will be excluded in the new edition.  In 1951, Kerouac, hopped up on coffee and Benzedrine, sat at a typewriter and began retelling the tale of an aimless trek he made across America. In a spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness burst, he typed on long sheets of tracing paper, taping each finished page to the previous one to form one continuous, rolling text.  Published six years later, “On the Road” won critical praise and became an icon of the post-World War II subculture of intellectuals, writers, musicians and rebels who identified with the freedom of Kerouac’s cross-country odyssey and embraced his disdain for 1950s conformity.  The original, 120-foot, coffee-stained scroll that is yellowing with age was purchased in 2001 by James Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $2.43 million (Shit – all that money blown on Peyton Manning, at least he’s got SOMETHING to show for those checks he’s writing!). The scroll is touring U.S. museums and libraries. (And I’m going to steal it…been watching Mission Impossible 4 times a day for the past three months preparing for the day it finally enters Agawam)