While the 1957 published novel became a classic, the "Original Scroll" version—released to the public decades later in 2007—offers a rougher, wilder, and more authentic experience:
Typed in a frantic three-week marathon in April 1951, the scroll is a 120-foot-long continuous roll of translucent Japanese tracing paper. Kerouac taped the sheets together so he could feed them into his typewriter without ever having to stop his train of thought to change pages. The Raw, Unedited Beat On the Road, The Original Scroll
: The original draft was typed as a single-spaced, continuous paragraph without chapter breaks or standard margins. While the 1957 published novel became a classic,