LOWELL — After a quarter-century in the collection of late Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, the original draft of Jack Kerouac’s most iconic book is returning to the author’s home city.
When Kerouac first wrote “On the Road” in April 1951, he did so via typewriter, a common tool for authors at the time. Instead of individual pages, though, he wrote the first draft on one continuous scroll of paper, which extends 119 feet and 8 inches when fully unraveled.
“Jack created this form of writing he called ‘spontaneous prose,’ ” Jack Kerouac Estate Literary Executive Director Jim Sampas told The Sun Monday evening.
The idea, Sampas said, was that Kerouac would be able to type continuously without risking losing his train of thought as he swapped out paper on his typewriter.
“The idea was coming from his head and going onto the page immediately,” said Sampas.
Since Kerouac’s death in 1969, that original scroll has changed hands multiple times among surviving members of the Kerouac family, until in 2001 it was purchased by Irsay for $2.4 million, which at the time was the most expensive literary manuscript ever sold at an auction.
Irsay died last year at the age of 65, and the ownership of his football team was transferred to his three daughters. Irsay had also been an avid collector of memorabilia from famous musicians, authors and films, which the “On the Road” scroll had become a part of.
Last week, many items from Irsay’s sprawling collection went up for auction, including the “On the Road” scroll and other manuscripts and letters of Kerouac’s. Thanks to the winning bid from country singer and songwriter Zach Bryan, the auction items from Kerouac will be returning to Lowell.
Bryan’s connection to the city of Lowell began last year when he purchased the St. Jean Baptiste Church building for a reported $3.4 million to help facilitate its transformation into the Jack Kerouac Museum and Performance Center. The church is where Kerouac served as an altar boy as a child, and where his funeral was held decades later.
Bryan acknowledged his purchase of the scroll in an Instagram story.
“Happy birthday, Jack. Scroll is headed to Lowell. Thank you for all the moments. I love ya,” Bryan said in his post, which included a photo of Kerouac in a football uniform.
Kerouac’s birthday was March 12.
Over the weekend, Bryan performed a show in Tampa Bay, Florida, where Sampas, Jack Kerouac Estate Director of Marketing and Business Development Sylvia Cunha and Acre Action Neighborhood founder Dave Ouellette visited and watched the auction.
“We were literally on the edge of our seats watching it,” Cunha said Monday. “We couldn’t see who was bidding. In our hearts we were so excited and scared. We were thinking, ‘Is this going to happen?’ because you didn’t know who was going to win it.”
Bryan would ultimately make the winning bids, and in doing so made the scroll the subject of another all-time auction record with a bid of $12.1 million.
“He bought the building, and now these are the archives of things you would want in this building, things that are special not just for Jack, but for Lowell,” said Cunha.
Ouellette said at one point just after the painting of the Kerouac mural on the side of the church, there was a real fear that the building would instead be converted into condominiums, and that the dream of the museum being at the church was dead. Their fortunes changed, Ouellette said, when Bryan purchased the building.
“This great, big, beautiful building would have been sitting there, as condos. It just turned the page when Zach did what he did,” Ouellette said Monday.
Sampas said the museum has now moved into the fundraising stage, and the hope is to be able to announce the choice of architect for the project soon.
Sampas said “On the Road,” a fictional novel inspired heavily by Kerouac’s own travels across the U.S., has been influential across multiple forms of media. He said musicians like Bob Dylan have taken inspiration from the book, while it also set the stage for what would later be known as gonzo journalism, which was made most famous by Hunter S. Thompson.
“There is no other work that has the power and significance of ‘On the Road,’” said Sampas. “It really is a homecoming … Jack would always come back to Lowell, and now Zach is bringing the scroll back to Lowell.”
Cunha said during their trip to the Tampa Bay area they visited the house Kerouac was living in when he died in 1969.
“It is a time capsule. It is basically the same as it was in 1969,” said Cunha.
Beyond just the scroll, Cunha said Bryan secured the winning bids for all Kerouac items included in the auction, including Thompson’s copy of Kerouac’s 1958 book “The Dharma Bums,” and various letters penned by Kerouac. The original scroll for “The Dharma Bums” was also purchased by Bryan for $1.6 million.
Other notable items sold in the auction of Irsay’s estate included Pink Floyd guitarist and singer David Gilmour’s “The Black Strat” guitar for $14.5 million, a baseball signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig for $33,000 and a prop golden ticket from the 1971 film adaptation of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” for $203,000.
Bryan was not available for comment Wednesday.