!:::Kerouac:::Attack:::!

I had been digging a Penguin paperback edition of "On the Road" for 6 days when I saw the NYTimes booksection Kerouac cover story under my cat, on the floor of my apartment. How's about this! The original manuscript has been published! Straight on through, babydolls! 8 full rolls of tracing paper [he later taped into a 120-foot scroll!] Now done up in super-handsome paragraphs-are-for-pussies all-out as-was proper printing. I've jumped over to finishing the book like this, as Jack typed those 3 weeks in April 1951. THIS F'ING ROXX! I'm wreading it with all the original names [Neal Cassady! Grand American Champion of Life! Bill Burroughs, Allen etc] and all that scorching-hot pre-edit pummeling prose, just go man, go! Yass! Yass! As of this morning [getting low, surfing on metrorail] the boys are in Mexico. Just hadda whooping time with maryjane & senoritas, thnx 2 the great Gregor, now they're in the jungles ... south ... dark, headlights out for a spell: And now we shot in inky darkness through the scream of insects and the great rank almost rotten smell descended and we remembered and realized that the map indicated just after Victoria the beginning of the tropic of Cancer. "We're in a new tropic! Nowonder the smell! Smell it!" I stuck my head out the window; bugs smashed at my face; a great screech rose the moment I cocked my ear to the wind. Suddenly our lights were working again and they poked ahead illuminating the lonely road that ran between solid walls of great drooping snaky trees as high as a hundred feet. "Son-of-a-BITCH!" yelled Frank in the back. "Hot-DAMN!" He was still high. I am tearing through this thing! Whatta ball! Hoo-ee! Here's some video of unrolling the scroll. There's a travelling exhibit, yass. Plus this supercool, upclose hi-res shot of the glorious thing.