NYPL

I was sadly not able to go on the field trip on Saturday but I got a chance to go to the exhibit on Thursday. The Beatific Soul: 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road exhibit at the New York Public Library was amazing and inspiring. I have always been a Kerouac fan- I have mixed feelings about his subjects and as a woman, I have not always been a fan on his feminist views. My favorite part of the exhibit was the 60-foot long scroll that he wrote on. The idea of a scroll to me has always been so old fashioned- harkening to the days of colonial America (or Harry Potter.) The idea of using a scroll now shows so much about how Kerouac wrote- fast, crazy and kinetic- just a fast stream of conscience. It’s almost like he has so many ideas in his head that the process of writing them down takes too long- turning a page would be such a waste of precious creative time!
I also really enjoyed the photographs of Kerouac- I have seen many photographs of him from the 50’s but I really liked the photos of him when he was a boy. There is such an aura that surrounds Kerouac that it becomes hard to think of him as a boy (for me at least.) There is so much legend and myth surrounding him, he is such a cultural icon that the idea of him being a kid who went to school and even injured himself on the Columbia football team seems so strange to me! It was a real shock for me to see all these souvenirs of his life and I really enjoyed seeing that he was a real person!