I discovered, right before I finished reading this, that Jack claims a dog ate the original ending of the scroll. Hmmm. I wonder if he had already perfected that one in school and decided to stick with it to explain mishaps with manuscripts. Do dogs really eat paper?

I’m a little more than halfway through this. I have been reading it for three days straight, pretty much straight-through except when I stop to clean house or sleep or work on the bathroom or go out with friends — you know, the usual. And during those three days, I have dreamed — intense dreams that I cannot remember when I wake up except the flavor of them hangs on in my subconscious and hangs over me like a pall. I think it is really because of this book, which is amazing in its own way — very intense and raw and immediate — and even though it is speaks of people and events long gone now, it is still immediate and in the face as if the events and the people are forever young and forever now, so fresh and real are Kerouac’s words. This is writing like many writers only wish they could write which makes the fact that it was written in a three-week period when the writer was less than 30 years old nothing short of amazing.

I’m not sure if I like the book because it cuts close to the bone oftentimes and is fascinating the way really gruesome car wrecks can be fascinating, but I will definitely finish it — hopefully today — and wish that it was longer.

Some people do not know that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road on a long roll of paper, so that the work would have a flowing continuity to it. (OK, I admit it — I did not know this until my friend told me. Then I totally pretensed myself and pretended I knew it all along.) Then Kerouac took the work on the scroll and rewrote it for the novel. This book is a transcription of his original scroll. Never read the novel, but I am going to try to make it through this book.