| Scrubbin' Da Scroll | ||||||||||||||||
| Part IV, The Acquiring Mind's Song | ||||||||||||||||
“Well, ya know, it's just... it's exciting. Ya know, I look at it as a stewardship. I don't believe that you own anything in this world. It's dust to dust. It's something that I take as a responsibility, being a writer myself, knowing the sweat and the blood that went into creating something like this, and knowing how much people love the piece -- that's all very important to me. Having the football team, how our fans love and cherish that. It's the same thing with something like this. It's great for Jack, right now, wherever his spiritual vibes are floating around, that he can be fulfilled, because as a writer, there's always this seed of doubt you have. You know, is it good enough? Is it worthy? Can it stand up with others? And a lot of times great artists end up dying before they ever find out what great artists they were. In his case, obviously this got published but it left him a little bitter on some of the rejection, and so what a great honor for him that he and the manuscript can be celebrated today.”
“What would he think of his work coming out of storage and selling for a record amount?”
“I'm sure he'd be just flabbergasted. It's exciting for me -- that my grandparents got off the ships from Hungary and Poland right here at Ellis Island with nothing but the clothes on their backs -- and you know, that's what this country's all about. And I think he would be amazed. These days, people, more so than 50 years ago, if you think you have some talent, you don't throw anything away. If you write anything, you know, like John Lennon, you know, I'm a big Lennon fan, and Lennon used to curse his aunty, 'You'll regret throwing my drawings away. They'll be worth something someday.' So now of course everything is kept and treasured. With the football team, we keep everything, and now when guys score touchdowns you'll see them take the ball and keep it. I think there's just a lot of great intrigue with this, tying in the Beat Generation and Cassady, Burroughs, Ginsberg, those guys had a huge influence on the cultural revolution in the sixties, and people like The Beatles and Bob Dylan, they had such a big influence, and to me that's really exciting -- to be able to rub shoulders with the seed planters. The flowers are always beautiful, but the people that planted the seeds, the people who, in their time, had a way of looking at things differently, and having the courage to talk and to write and to live about it, that's what changes the world.”
“Will you publish it?”
“A couple of things are planned. Sometime in the next coming months, somewhere in Indiana, I'll probably put it on display at a museum. We've talked to a couple of people about that. 2007 I've thought about having the 50th anniversary of the actual publication where maybe we'll do a tour, we'll follow the actual book's journey and have the scroll do the tour of the country and kind of mirror that journey. We have Dr. Douglas Brinkley here who is involved. He's the authorized biographer for Jack and he and I've discussed some various things. I actually tried to have Hunter Thompson in here today, I almost had him on the plane but then he turned back.” (laughs.) “I thought that would liven up things a little bit.” (louder laughter, then he looks up at the cameras) “Hunter, if you're out there, we miss you.” (and laughs again)
“Why did he turn back?”
“I don't know, it was a late night phone call and it just didn't happen. I think he wanted to watch the Laker game,” he says laughing.
Then I asked him, “Will scholars other than Douglas be able to have access to studying the scroll?”
“Ya know, certainly. I'm very open-minded in terms of people who love it and want to have an opportunity to see it and be around it. That's what it's about. Like I said, I don't view it as something I own. Someone else will have it when I'm gone, and someone else will have it when they're gone. I have three daughters, my oldest goes to college in New York, and you know, it's for the future generations. You love to see the kids and people who are influenced and have a chance to get up and be nearby it. To me, trying to let fans see it and people who have an interest in it, I'm very much open-minded to try to do that.”
Then I asked a follow-up, “Would you expose the whole 120 feet when you did it in Indianapolis?”
“You know, that's what I think has to be talked about. I really think one of the interesting things about this manuscript is the unique way that it was written, and the way that it's comported, it's the length minus the bit that the dog bit off.” (laughing) “It's too bad they couldn't auction off the dog collar of the dog -- that would probably have brought in some good money here today.” (laughing)
“You'd have bought it, right?”
Laughing, “That would have been a good thing to combine it with.”
“What was the first Beat literature you ever read?”
“I would say, Naked Lunch, for me was, uh, and for me, I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan. I've had the honor to be with Bob several times and get to know him a little bit and you know certainly his writing and singing brought me to the doorstep of people like Jack, and people like Dylan Thomas who had a piece sold here.”
Then a guy asks him to sign a little rubber football, joking that it'll be worth something in a few years. While he's doing this the AP guy asks, “Jim, you said you were a writer. What do you write?”
“Poetry and songs. I'm a guitarist as well. I actually have an Elvis Presley guitar that he strummed, that's probably -- but for anyone out there, if you have a John Lennon, I would trade the Elvis for the Lennon,” he says, laughing again.
“You went awfully high on this; were you willing to spend more to buy this?”
“Yeah, it wasn't important to me, I just wanted to make sure we kept it in this country, kept it in America, you know just have the ability for people to be able to share it and enjoy it, and I, you know, I'm just a fan like anyone else of it, and to me it's just enjoyable to make sure it doesn't get locked away somewhere or get taken away to a far distant place or something like that.”
“Did you walk in here expecting to spend a record amount for a manuscript?”
“Yeah, I was willing to spend a lot more!” he says, laughing loud, as does everyone else. “I won't tell you what my max was...” (laughing) “I have to keep that a secret. I have a feeling -- unless my fellow owner Paul Allen was goin' against me I think I woulda got it, but if Paul was here I must admit I would have been beaten,” he says laughing.
“Do you want to read it off the scroll?”
“Yes, that would be -- but we have a dog who's very aggressive so we should keep that away from him,” and everyone laughs.
“How old were you when it was published?”
“I'm 41, so I wasn't born. I was born in '59.”
Then Rosebud Pettet perks up beside me and says, “This gentleman here sponsored On The Road marathon readings a few weeks ago in LA and New York...” (and I'm thinking, No way -- is she talking about me!? This keeps getting weirder.) “Are you planning maybe, since you've got the scroll, to do any little celebrations on Jack in your hometown or wherever you plan to keep it?”
“Sure, I'm open-minded to it, I think that Dr. Brinkley, as well as my publicist Myra Borschoff, you know, I'm open-minded to hear what people want to do with it. Again, just to be able to share it and have fun with it and celebrate it. Definitely that's what it's about, so I'm open-minded to any of those sort of fun things.”
Then the AP guy jumps in again, “Dr. Brinkley, I'd like to know what you think, as a scholar, the significance of this is now, the fact that this went for such big bucks, what does this all mean?”
Brinkley: “That Jack Kerouac's become one of the writers that people care about. That he's like Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Faulkner, and even more so from a cultural point of view. As Jim says, On The Road is a book that changed a lot of people's lives. It's a coming of age novel, and more than any other 20th century American literary document, there's a greater interest in the history and mythology of this particular manuscript than any other one that anybody can think of. It's unique, and it not only solidified the Beat Generation, but it also set into motion the notion of 'First thought -- best thought,' spontaneity in literature, and then, as Jim said, it influenced so many people into the 60s. People like Thomas Pynchon who credits Kerouac's On The Road, to people like Bob Dylan, on down today to the music world, people like Lou Reed and Tom Waits. It's never-ending, Kerouac's influence. And for people that love On The Road, it's exciting that Jim has it, because he has this very open heart and wants to bring it first to the heartland for people to come see, and then have it tour the country eventually for the 50th anniversary of On The Road, so you couldn't be doing any better than that.”
“What can you learn looking at the scroll that you can't from reading the book?”
Brinkley: “A lot. It's different than the book, all the names are in it so you actually see Allen Ginsberg's name, or Neal Cassady, the real people, there are no pseudonyms. And then you get to see how Kerouac's mind worked. For people that enjoy Jack Kerouac -- because he's trying to get the words quickly out of him, you can see how his mind works. And I think, more than anything, what an extraordinary typer he was! He would just type and type. One of his great gifts as a writer was his quickness. Truman Capote used to mock Kerouac saying 'it's not writing, it's typing.' But when you're trying to get your first-thought, best-thought out, being that quick a typist, as evidenced in the scroll, with so few changes and so many beautiful paragraphs -- we were looking while we were sitting down, Kerouac writing about Indiana, coming in on a bus in Indiana with the corn husks piled up, and then necking with the girl all the way to Indianapolis. There's hardly a city in America that doesn't somehow make a cameo in On The Road, and Kerouac doesn't have something that's spiritually poetic and apropos to say about it.”
Irsay: “Plus the paddle, Doug. The paddle was 47, his age, and 9, the year he died, '69, so it's 4-7-9, and Doug said that was a good omen right away.”
AP: “Jim, are you kind of an All-American boy?”
“I'm not sure what that means.”
Pause, stumble mumble bumble, “You're so American, it's unbelievable.”
“I guess I am then, you know?” (laughing) “You know, it's like George Harrison says, 'I hope they don't get time to hang a sign on me.' It's just a, a -- it's a good thing to be called because I love this country.”
And then your friendly Beat University Reporter chirps in yet again! Brian: “Do either of you think there's any preservation needed in the short term for it?”
Irsay: “That's something that I've consulted some experts on, and that's really important, to make sure that this thing can remain intact for a lot of years and be shown for many centuries.”
Since that wasn't enough for me, I once again pushed the Follow-Up Button: “Was it the experts' opinion that anything needed to be done? Is it in okay shape?”
“Just that it's in real good shape considering the years. You know, the proper room temperatures and that sort of thing have to be looked at. When you start getting out there, 500 years, a thousand years, I think, you know, there's some erosion, it's almost inevitable, but we're gonna find ways to protect it, obviously.”
Some new reporter announces himself and asks, “Jim, what does this purchase mean to you?”
“You know, it means a lot to really acknowledge people that stand and fight for the truth and what they believe in in their art, that ultimately it's rewarded and celebrated. And again, there's so many artists out there right now this very moment that are working and some of them will die without ever really receiving any due for what they've done. But I think, anyone's human spirit, since you go back to the days of the cavemen, it's just expression, it's self-expression. People want to be recognized for having a feeling and sharing that with someone else, and I think that's what this acknowledges. And for me, it's just a lot of fun. I feel blessed to able to be here, and have gotten the manuscript, and just look forward to having a lot of fun with it, and sharing it, and celebrating it, because it's enjoyable. There's so many difficult things that go on in the world, it's nice to celebrate life. In the NFL we do that entertaining people. I look at this the same way as just being able to do that. My next goal is to be able to sit the script next to the Lombardi Trophy, you know? That's what you get for winning the Super Bowl, and we're real close, you know, and to have those two things together hopefully maybe by the end of January would be great,” he says, laughing.
“Did you buy it individually, or did anybody go in with you?”
“No, just individually.”
“How old were you when you read On The Road?”
“I read it about '77, and what it meant to me just being a teenager in the 70's, you know, freedom, rebellion, the things that a young person looks at in life, which is just -- the journey -- the excitement of the journey, the search for truth and meaning and the thrills of life. It's like Bob Seger said, 'I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then,'” and he laughs again. “You gotta study that line hard to get the true meaning of that,” and he laughs even harder.
Then he says, “Well guys, thank you very much.” And I say right to him, “Thank you!” and make serious direct eye contact. Something great had happened.
There's a lot more that went on. What's above is the complete post-purchase impromptu news conference, minus the opening NFL realignment stuff, and a bunch of um's and you-know's. In other news, as I was surfin' around afterwards, I talked to John Sampas and asked him if they were going to publish the text of the scroll, and he answered, I believe the word was, “Absolutely,” but for sure I remember the look, which was like, Duh, dumb question, what do you think?
Random snippets overheard from Jim Irsay's sit-down interview with the New York Times:
Brian Hassett Back to first page > Part I, The Author's Song > page 1, 2, 3, 4
 Brian Hassett's been On The Road since hitchhiking from Vancouver to the Camp Kerouac Conference in Boulder in '82. He recently produced shows evoking Jack's spirit in both New York and LA on the 50th anniversary of his writing the scroll April 2nd - 22nd, 1951. Works at MTV, has written for the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, etc., and is really just striving to keep the voice pure and the chi channeling. By Date | By Topic | ||||||||||||||||
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