‘On the Road’ Repairs Hope to Beat Back Time

Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, who bought Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” manuscript last month for $2.43 million, said the frayed scroll will be restored by preservationists at Indiana University.

Kerouac wrote the book during a marathon three-week period in 1951 on sheets of paper filled with single-spaced type and taped together to form a 120-foot-long roll.

The edges of the cramped typescript are now eaten by time, paper deterioration and damage blamed on a dog that once gnawed on it.

Published in 1957, the novel is one of the keystone literary works of the Beat generation.