Scribbling alone in your notebook one night, you create the first draft of your Magnum Opus. The tangy smell of ink never left your body after you crafted a scroll to bring to your editor. Yet as she reads it, you learn that it is almost identical to a story written in Prague forty years ago. Cryptomnesia - a blog about literature and writing by author Joseph Patrick Pascale.
I first read On the Road by Jack Kerouac in 2008. Then I started to get even more into Kerouac's writing, reading many of his other novels starting in 2009. But at that time, I learned I had just missed the chance to see with my own two eyes the actual, original, legendary, scroll manuscript of On the Road. Starting in 2007 and ending in early 2008, the scroll went on a road trip of its own, being displayed in some museums and libraries around the United States, including New York City (which would have been easy for me to have seen!).
So these past nine years, that thought's crept up from the back of my mind--that I just missed my chance to actually see Kerouac's scroll, and maybe the chance wouldn't arise again. See, it's not like the scroll belongs to a museum or library; it's the private property of a rich guy.
Like many famous writers, there is a whole controversy surrounding Kerouac's estate after his death. There's even a forged will. In his youth, Kerouac was friends with Sebastian Sampas, who tragically died young during World War II. Toward the very end of his life, Kerouac married Sampas' sister Stella. That's how his estate ended up belonging to the Sampas family. John Sampas was managing the estate until this past May when he died at the age of 84. Sampas' management of the estate was controversial. While he clearly did many good things such as donating a huge collection of Kerouac's papers to the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library or getting previously unseen Kerouac works into print like the original scroll version's text of On the Road, along with many other previously unseen novels and writings, he was criticized on many other accounts such as selling off Kerouac effects to Johnny Depp.
Scholars decried Sampas' plan to auction off the scroll, and it was only good luck that Jim Irsay, who won the auction and bought the scroll for 2.43 million dollars, was a person who cared about the scroll's importance, had it restored, and has sometimes made it available to the public. Unfortunately, the status of other manuscripts, such as the scroll of The Dharma Bums, is unknown.
One appropriately rainy night in early May, I was reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, and I popped over to Google to read a bit more about Jackson's biography. So in my Googling, I end up on this website: http://blog.americanwritersmuseum.org/2017/03/28/follow-the-classics-with-these-books-by-women-writers/, a list of suggested books by female authors posted by the blog of the American Writers Museum. What led me to the page was, "If you love The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, read The Sundial by Shirley Jackson" (and relevant to this post, they recommend to read Joan Didion if you like Kerouac. I have, but the two writers are very different). After glancing at that, I realized what page I was on and started wondering what the heck the "American Writers Museum" was. This was shortly before the museum opened, and I started reading the description and thought it sounded cool. Then I saw their first exhibitions and knew I had to travel there.
— JosephPatrickPascale (@JosephPascale) May 6, 2017
The name of the exhibit at the American Writers Museum is "A Beat Journey: Jack Kerouac's On the Road."
The exhibit focused on telling the story of Kerouac's life and the writing on On the Road by way of the cities he lived in and traveled through.
I had never before seen this photograph of Kerouac flipping through all of his "secret scribbled notebooks," and I thought it was really nice they included this, as it helps break down the myth (that Kerouac himself helped create) that On the Road was rushed out in three weeks. In reality, it was drafted in notebooks for years on the road itself, compiled and written into the legendary scroll (in three weeks), and almost immediately Kerouac began to revise it into another draft on regular sheets of paper (to be more appealing to publishers who recoiled at the unorthodox scroll).
Of course, having the scroll itself there shatters this myth as well. It's impossible not to notice that the manuscript is covered in Kerouac's pencil notes. He's crossed out many sentences and added in others.
One of the first things I noticed was a very well-known change; all of the "mothers" were transformed to "aunts" to aid in obfuscating the true nonfiction nature of the narrative, and thus protecting against potential lawsuits:
I also learned how difficult Jack Kerouac's handwriting is to read, so it's fortunate he was such a good typist!
It was fortuitous that I was traveling with Suany, as she is very perceptive and noticed many things I didn't. For instance, the famous opening of the scroll:
In all the times I've viewed photos of the famous opening of the scroll, including on the back copy of the book, I never noticed that it starts with a typo.
"I first met met Neal not long after my father died..." Suany immediately noticed that error, and said it was nice for aspiring writers to see that the legendary draft of a classic American novel begins with a typo because everyone makes mistakes and you can't let that hold you back.
It was a nice touch that the back wall was adorned with a recreation of the hand-drawn map Kerouac drew in his notebook to sketch out his first hitch-hiking trip in On the Road.
Many recollections of the scroll describe its ghostly, translucent quality. Kerouac may have typed later scrolls on teletype paper, but his first scroll, On the Road, was typed on Japanese tracing paper. Kerouac met his then-wife Joan Haverty after her boyfriend, Bill Cannastra died. He was a wild figure in the Beat Generation, and he died in a drunken goof where he climbed out of a moving subway car. Kerouac briefly lived in Cannastra's old apartment, which was where he got the Japanese tracing paper that he would tape together and turn into the scroll for On the Road.
Viewing the scroll stretched out on stark white and well lit, you can't tell it's translucent. I only realized this quality as I peered at all the rest of it that hadn't been unfurled. You can see the backward print through the other side as clearly as you can see the front of it.
Another point of interest Suany observed about the scroll is that you could tell Kerouac's typewriter was broken. The margin on the left side would type at an uneven angle, so Kerouac would have to readjust every so often before the words got cut off.
It'd be appropriate to end this with the torn up ending of the scroll where Kerouac notes, "Ate by Patchkee, a dog," but I couldn't see that part because it was rolled up. ----------------------------------------------------------
Literary Explorations of Chicago
Obviously, we're always interested in experiencing the literary aspect of places, whether historical or contemporary. Usually, you're left to figuring this out on your own, but the American Writers Museum teamed up with an app called Vamonde to create what they called the "Chicago Literary Landmarks Hunt."
It's cool to see these literary sights of interest gathered here. The app lets users create and share their own journeys like this, so I might want to experiment with it more in the future.
---------------------------------------------------------- You're reading this, so it's time to admit it: You’ve been one–a bookstore hobo. Lingering too long among shelves of books. Sitting between the aisles reading a book you know you don’t have the money to buy, and thinking to yourself, “Oh, if I could only stay here forever.” So why don't you read my novella The Bookstore Hobos? Published in the Eunoia Review, The Bookstore Hobos is the story of Zaid, who tries to live in a bookstore when he finds himself unemployed. His adventures will take him to New York City, where he must attempt to apply what he's read to the real world. ----------------------------------------------------------
From what I've read about the origins of the new American Writers Museum in Chicago, there was confusion and resistance surrounding its creation, with many wondering how it would differ from a library. In a debate over what to name it, "Museum of American Literature" was evidently in the running, but Malcolm O’Hagan, who based the concept for the museum off of his visit to the Dublin Writers Museum, said, "The word ‘literature’ has a highbrow feel, and we wanted a broader audience...We debated it back and forth, but ultimately decided the focus on writers was the right one. People are always fascinated by creative people." That was an insightful decision to make, and it is reflected throughout the museum, since at many points you are encouraged to write with pen and paper, create letters on old typewriters, or storyboard with touchscreens and computers. It's presented as though you're doing this under the guidance of the American master-writers who have come before you. At the entrance to the museum, it is written, "Our mission is to celebrate the enduring influence of American writers on our history, our identity, our culture, and our daily lives." The first room we visited was the children's section. It has colorful artwork, interactive exhibits, and couches for sitting and reading the books that are available. The Langston Hughes exhibit stood out to me here.
Palm: All Awake in the Darkness
"Exhibit best experienced in a quiet, contemplative state." I'd say this is true of the entire museum. It's estimated that there are three novels' worth of text in the museum.
From what I can tell, "Palm" is one of two rotating exhibits at the museum, with the other being the Jack Kerouac/On the Road manuscript exhibit. If they plan on keeping it this way, that would mean one exhibit for a living writer and one for a historical writer. The "Palm" exhibit was created based on the "life and poetry" of W.S. Merwin.
Thirty years ago, Merwin and his wife, Paula, started the process of turning a wasteland on the island of Maui in Hawaii into "one of the most species-rich palm gardens in the world."
This exhibit attempts to provide the experience of visiting the palm garden as well as a physical version of his poetry. The creators of the exhibit, Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris in collaboration with Ian Boyden, explain, "In this installation, we make an analogy between gardening and writing." These are two activities that are "infused with a spirit of contemplation and awareness" for Merwin.
"Many of Merwin's poems, particularly his early work, are dark, even apocalyptic. Long before many others, Merwin saw how humans, through the rise of greed and anger, threaten their own lives, and all life on this planet. Our increasingly detailed understanding of climate change and the current extinction crisis has affirmed his early intuition. Indeed, some of his poems are poems of warning--retellings of the myth of Gilgamesh." I particularly appreciate that last part, as when I first read the Epic of Gilgamesh, I immediately imagined how the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu defeating Humbaba, the guardian of the forest, and cutting down the cedar trees could be repurposed for contemporary audiences.
Also included in what they call "Ecology of Ideas" is a poem by Ross Gay: "Gay's poem about how the murdered Eric Garner once worked as a horticulturalist for the Department of Parks and Recreation in NYC is a reminder of how ecological justice and social justice are inextricably linked."
At the entrance of the Nation of Writers hall, there is this projector screen shaped like America that cycles through various parts of America's history through the lens of writers.
On this wall, a timeline of the United States runs above notable writers from the past through 2013.
The opposite wall is called a "Surprise Bookshelf," although they are not actually books.
The outward faces of these panels show a text by an author and a genre classification.
You can flip the face around to discover something on the back side. You can spend a long time flipping these to find different surprises on the back side.
For instance, see what you find for Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Or here, you can learn a bit about the social significance of "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg.
"[Anne Bradstreet's] book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650) made her the first published poet of America."
During their lifetimes, a president and a slave, but enshrined in this museum, they're on the same ground as notable writers.
The timeline running along the top gives an idea of the writers' historical contexts.
The text is constantly shifting on the Word Waterfall.
The cozy atmosphere of Readers Hall invites you to select a book and sit down in a comfortable chair.
The screens here let you use Goodreads to select your five favorite books and turn them into a digital bookmark that will be emailed to you.
It's easy to get distracted by the Kerouac exhibit on the left, but the Mind of a Writer section opens up with beautifully maintained antique typewriters, pencil and paper, and notebook computers so that you can write about your experience at the museum in whatever medium is most inspiring.
The paintings on the wall, which include nice quotes about writing from authors really make this section shine.
Based on your selection of fuel, writing habit, favorite things, and companions, this display informs you on what you have in common with famous writers.
This display lets you create dialogue.
"You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. It's just so easy to give up!" - Octavia E. Butler
"Work on one thing at a time until finished. Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards." - Henry Miller
Isaac Asimov was beyond prolific.
There are games in this section as well. Here, you can sit across from someone and compare your ability to accurately fill in missing words from famous writing.
It's nice to see that the American Writers Museum also includes a section about writers from Chicago. It's likely that many visitors to the museum will also be visitors to the city like myself, so I appreciated having the chance to learn more about the literary history of the city.
Another interactive display lets you jump through different eras of Chicago's literary history.
"Considered by some to be America's first important gay novel, Henry Black Fuller's Bertram Cope's Year (1919) features a romance between the title character and his 'friend' Arthur Lemoyne...Fuller depicts the relationship as neither shameful nor melodramatic...he shows the complexity of being gay in a straight world."
"By the end of the decade, [Lorraine] Hansberry had completed A Raisin in the Sun. Her family's purchase of a home in a white Chicago neighborhood inspired the plot, but she had a bigger goal: to show the insidious impact of racism on everyday lives."
"[O]ur America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity. It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness." - Richard Wright, Black Boy (1945)
The only reason Roger Ebert stood out to me was because I had just read the biography of Dalton Trumbo, and he's about to review "Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got his Gun."
And of course the museum ends with a gift shop, although really, it's just some shelf space around the welcome desk, so that means it also starts with a gift shop. The wall with the map is about sister museums throughout the country. The plan is to share artifacts and exhibits between museums (many of the museums focus on one specific writer).
I don't agree with people who intimate that this project is foolish or redundant, as a library is already a museum to writers. The American Writers Museum clearly has a distinctly different mission from a library, and exploring the museum provides visitors with a unique experience. I'm sure that the museum's creators hope it can work as a complement to libraries, wherein visitors learn something about writers they didn't know and go home to their local library to read the actual books.
Something surprising is that the museum's creators made a conscious effort not to make it a museum of literary artifacts. In an interview with Tin House, O'Hagan said, "I would like to emphasize the American Writers Museum will be 'Story Telling' institution where artifacts will play a much smaller role than in a traditional museum." Nevertheless, I think they were smart to open the museum with Kerouac's On the Road manuscript. Being an embodiment of writing and the creative process, the scroll fits their mission. But I hope that they will continue to display these types of historical literary treasures, and maybe even acquire some permanent ones of their own as the museum expands. For me personally, as much as I enjoyed the rest of the museum, it was learning that Kerouac's manuscript would be there that inspired me to drive 781 miles across five states to visit.
---------------------------------------------------------- You're reading this, so it's time to admit it: You’ve been one–a bookstore hobo. Lingering too long among shelves of books. Sitting between the aisles reading a book you know you don’t have the money to buy, and thinking to yourself, “Oh, if I could only stay here forever.” So why don't you read my novella The Bookstore Hobos? Published in the Eunoia Review, The Bookstore Hobos is the story of Zaid, who tries to live in a bookstore when he finds himself unemployed. His adventures will take him to New York City, where he must attempt to apply what he's read to the real world. ----------------------------------------------------------
