The English Channel Vol 17, Special Edition Save The Date 2017 | Page 2

EXTRA! EXTRA!
September 5th, 1957
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac,
is published.
Hailed by the New York Times as
"the most beautifully executed, the
clearest and the most important ut-
terance yet made by the generation
Kerouac himself named years ago
as 'beat,' and whose principal ava-
tar he is."
Reports vary as to the exact
amount of time Kerouac spent
working on his novel. According to
some he began drafting it in 1948
after an epic road-trip (perhaps the
most literary outcome of a ‘What I
did on my Summer Vacation’ essay
ever!). Others have it that he com-
pleted the novel, in the form of a
scroll, with no margins and the sin-
gle-spaced pages taped together, in
three weeks.
Scholars have not come to a defini-
tive conclusion on which of these
accounts are more accurate, but
do seem to concur that one can
easily believe both the ‘It took
nearly twenty-one years’ and the ‘I
had a deadline, so I wrote this in
only twenty-one days’ versions.
Rest assured, we’ll keep looking
into this developing story—and
sharing it with our students….
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