NEWS: On the Road, Under Glass, At the Museum

"This is the first time people anywhere will be able to get the full effect of the work," said Howard Collinson, the museum's director. "It does have the character of a piece of artwork, like some kind of performance art. But at the same time, I don't think it was an act of convenience that he put his novel together this way."

During a 20-day stint in 1951, Kerouac hunkered down in front of a typewriter at a friend's New York apartment. Hopped up on coffee and Benzedrine, he began retelling the tale of the aimless trek he made across America. In a spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness burst, Kerouac typed away on long sheets of tracing paper, taping each finished page to the previous one to form one continuous, rolling text. […]

After his death in 1969, the scroll bounced around, spending time some say in a dorm room closet, before landing at the New York Public Library. In 2001, Indianapolis Colts' owner Jim Irsay bought the scroll for $2.43 million at an auction, then decided to dispatch it along much of the same path that inspired its author.

"In part he feels like a caretaker, but he also feels a responsibility to share with people something that was so influential on a generation," Jim Canary, hired to take care of the scroll, said of Irsay.

It is 8 1/2 by 1,440 inches long. It was thought to have been chewed to pieces, lost in time, or had decayed to dust,