Jack Kerouac: On The Road (The Original Scroll)

Last night I (finally!) finished reading Jack Kerouac's cult classic, On The Road. Now, I'm not going to be naive about this and assume no-one has head of On The Road. It's one of the pillars of the "Beat Generation", and with the recent making of the film, I'm pretty sure it's been thrown back into the public eye this year. However, after taking a good, long while to read this, there is one little recommendation I would make for anyone looking to read this book, or try something new with 2013 just round the corner: read The Original Scroll version.

As you get sucked into maddened trail of Jack Kerouac's adventures hitch-hiking across the North American continent, there's something so pure, and holy (!), about reading the story in its original form. As if still smudgy with the ink from his typewriter, the dense text never lets up, and its consuming style adds to the fact that the characters haven't yet been given their fictional aliases yet. No matter how sad I was to get to the end of his excited, messy first draft, it was a pleasure to read it in its naked form.