A 120-foot burst of genius: Jack Kerouac’s 'On the Road' scroll and its wild afterlife

NEW YORK (AP) — In the spring of 1951, the muse landed so hard in the caffeinated mind of Jack Kerouac that within three weeks he had hurried out a full-length, single-spaced manuscript — a draft for “On the Road” that he taped together into a scroll some 120 feet long.