King of ‘The Road’: Jack Kerouac’s hometown fetes author’s 100th birthday
nypost.comrunning from early March into April.The main attraction at the event, dubbed Kerouac @ 100, is certainly the original 120 foot “On The Road” scroll, the original manuscript Kerouac typed out while living on West 20th Street in Chelsea.“Jack changed his writing style for this new novel, which becomes ‘On the Road,’” explained Kerouac’s nephew, Jim Sampas, a music producer and the literary executor of Jack Kerouac’s estate. “He doesn’t want to stop to change sheets of paper in the typewriter and uses this teletype paper so he can write in a continuous flow.”On loan from Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay’s personal collection, the scroll is part of “Visions Of Kerouac,” an exhibit of artifacts co-curated with the UMass Lowell Kerouac Center (on display Mar.
18 – Apr. 25 at the Boott Cotton Mills Gallery, 115 John Street.).Kerouac coined the term “Beat Generation,” meaning beat down and broke, and he walked that walk.
A true working-class hero growing up in this mill town, founded by Francis Cabot Lowell during the Industrial Revolution as the first American “company town,” attracting generations of immigrants like Kerouac’s French Canadian parents.Birthday weekend guided bus tours will trace Kerouac’s life in the city, which honored the author in 1988 with the Jack Kerouac Park on Bridge Street, where his words are etched on beautiful stone monuments.A Kerouac museum and performance center is planned for the former Saint Jean Baptiste Church, where Jack, a Catholic and Buddhist, was an altar boy and where his funeral was held.“That’s going to take a massive influx of cash,” said Sampas of the project. “It’s in its beginning stage.”But king-of-the-road Kerouac didn’t stick close to home.
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