Celebrating 50 Years of On the Road

Jenny Shank reports in New West Dec. 19 about a series of events in the Denver area commemorating the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

The Denver Public Library will display the On The Road scroll January through March. According to a press release, the library will exhibit "the original 120-foot scroll on which Kerouac wrote his first typewritten draft of On The Road."

Says Shank: "The book is significant for Denver because a good portion of it takes place here, where Kerouac meets up with pal Neal Cassady, who is called Dean Moriarty in On The Road. Kerouac writes that Moriarty ‘used to beg in front of Larimer alleys and sneak the money back to his father, who waited among the broken bottles with an old buddy, then when Dean grew up he began hanging around the Glenarm poolhalls; he set a Denver record for stealing cars and went to the reformatory.' "

It must be noted that a short stretch of On the Road takes place in Cheyenne during Frontier Days (called "Wild West Days" in the book).

The opening ceremony for the scroll exhibit will feature musician and friend of Kerouac David Amram (January 6, 2-3:30 p.m., Denver Central Library). The Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library will screen the beat film "Pull My Daisy," (January 5, 8-10 p.m.). Amram will perform a concert entitled "The Musical Roots of Kerouac's Prose" at El Chapultepec (January 6, 6-8 p.m.). A walking tour about the places Kerouac haunted in town entitled "A Lilac Evening, Jack Kerouac in Denver" will embark from the Central Library (January 7, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.), and finally there will be a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson ("From Kentucky to Colorado - The Literary and Journalistic Legacy of Hunter S. Thompson") at the Central Library (Sunday, January 7, 2:30-4 p.m.).

Shank also suggests that Kerouac fans to check out the website Neal's Denver, which features an online walking tour of the places where Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac hung out.

Labels: Colorado, writers, Wyoming

- posted by Michael Shay @ 9:42 PM