Kerouac Still Draws a Crowd

David Jacobson realized the bit of renegade in him 15 years ago when he rashly decided to relocate from Chicago to this literary mecca of “madmen and malcontents.”

He had just finished reading Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” for a college class, and following in the tire tracks of his newfound hero suddenly became his obsession. He chucked his old life to cruise the blue highways and back roads Kerouac once meandered, moving to the city he has come to associate with his beloved Jack.

On Friday, the 36-year-old freelance journalist was among hundreds of Kerouac fanatics who got a chance to view what many referred to as “the sacred scroll,” the first draft of the 1957 novel that became the bible of the emerging Beat Generation, the book many said profoundly changed both their lives and American literature for good.

Locked away in a safe for decades, the manuscript--typed single-spaced on 120 feet of tracing paper as Kerouac holed up in his New York City flat for a caffeine-fueled 20-day writing marathon--was put on display by Christie’s auction house here prior to its sale later this month.

Officials expect the draft to command $1.5 million. But for Kerouac disciples, who gazed at the document with the reverence they would have for a religious artifact, the scroll is considered pretty near priceless.

“It’s like the Holy Grail of American letters, the Rosetta stone and the Shroud of Turin all rolled into one,” said Jacobson. “Kerouac is a hero to me. He’s the reason I live here today. And it’s such a rare thing to look down here on Jack’s handiwork, to see the real source of inspiration in your life.”

San Francisco was a destination city in “On the Road,” billed on later-edition covers in the 1950s as “the explosive bestseller that tells all about today’s wild youth and their frenetic search for Experience and Sensation.”

Kerouac completed his second draft of the novel while staying at the home here of friend Neal Cassady, who inspired the book. He also spent much time carousing on the streets of North Beach with poet Allen Ginsberg and other emerging literary voices of his generation.

Christie’s officials decided to show the work here and in Chicago before the May 22 auction in New York. “San Francisco was on the top of the list because Jack spent so much time here,” said Chris Coover, a manuscript specialist at Christie’s. “It had to be here.”

Kerouac, who died in 1969, created the first draft of his definitive Beat Generation manifesto by pasting together 12-foot-long strips of semitranslucent paper, then feeding the scroll through the platen of his manual typewriter so he could write without interruption or even paragraphs.

Ginsberg once called the scroll “a magnificent single paragraph several blocks long, rolling like the road itself.”

Now yellowed with age, the manuscript still bears the occasional cross-outs--by repeated Xs--the penciled deletions and word changes. Auction officials showed the scroll under a plexiglass display atop an oblong table covered with a white cloth.

On Friday, a steady stream of bike messengers, writers, teachers and tourists peered at the display, some reading the lines with their lips moving. While some gawked in silence, others emoted, like the bearded man in the black beret who repeatedly whispered: “Man! Wow! Man! Wow!”

Several Kerouac biographers and other scholars also showed up to see the draft, answering impromptu questions from fans.

Gerald Nicosia, author of the 1983 memoir “Memory Babe,” told rapt listeners how Kerouac used to hang out at a bar called the Black Cat, once located only a block away from where the Transamerica Pyramid now stands.

Mendocino County builder Tom Jones, who drove three hours to see the manuscript, joked that he was a little disappointed. “They should have included a little tube so you could smell it, too,” he said.

“I can just imagine what that thing would be like. It probably still reeks of cigarettes, sweat and Benzedrine. But man, oh man, here it is, right here.”