
On the Road: The Original Scroll
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Narrated by:
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John Ventimiglia
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By:
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Jack Kerouac
About this listen
The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published word for word as Kerouac originally composed it.
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll, this document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary American literary history. It represents the first full expression of Kerouac's revolutionary aesthetic, the identifiable point at which his thematic vision and narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital experimentation in the American literary, musical, and visual arts in the post-World War II period.
It was not until more than six years later, and after several new drafts, that Viking published, in 1957, the novel known to us today. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of On the Road, Viking will publish the 1951 scroll in a standard book format. The differences between the two versions are principally ones of significant detail and altered emphasis. The scroll is slightly longer and has a heightened linguistic virtuosity and a more sexually frenetic tone. It also uses the real names of Kerouac's friends instead of the fictional names he later invented for them. The transcription of the scroll was done by Howard Cunnell who, along with Joshua Kupetz, George Mouratidis, and Penny Vlagopoulos, provides a critical introduction that explains the fascinating compositional and publication history of On the Road and anchors the text in its historical, political, and social contexts.
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- Narrated by: Bret Easton Ellis
- Length: 23 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.
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Don’t read if you have a weak stomach
- By Judith on 02-13-23
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Schindler's List
- By: Thomas Keneally
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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An “extraordinary” (New York Review of Books) novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of The Book of Science and Antiquities and The Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden — Schindler’s Jews — to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil.
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really well done
- By Neil H. Greenberg on 03-09-19
By: Thomas Keneally
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Just an Ordinary Day
- Stories
- By: Shirley Jackson
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter, Mark Deakins, Kimberly Farr, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House - classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe - Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers with her explorations of evil, madness, and cruelty. Soon after her untimely death in 1965, Jackson’s children discovered a treasure trove of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, many of which are brought together in this remarkable collection.
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Captures a Bygone Era
- By Anonymous User on 11-11-22
By: Shirley Jackson
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The Hotel New Hampshire
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 19 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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“The first of my father’s illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.” So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the strange times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they “dream on” in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel.
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Should have a XX rating for sex including incest.
- By psychodr1 on 09-02-20
By: John Irving
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Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
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Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
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Hawaii
- A Novel
- By: James A. Michener, Steve Berry - introduction
- Narrated by: Larry McKeever, Fred Sanders - introduction
- Length: 51 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The saga of a land from the time when the volcanic islands rose out of the sea to the decade in which they become the 50th state. Michener uses individuals' experiences to symbolize the struggle of the various races to establish themselves in the islands.
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Much to My Surprise, I Really Liked It
- By Donna L. Leary on 05-16-18
By: James A. Michener, and others
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Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
- Vintage International
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty.
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Long story
- By A. Baulkman on 08-01-24
By: James Baldwin
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The Agatha Christie Collection: 11 Novels and Stories including the First 6 Poirot Novels
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder on the Links, Poirot Investigates, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Big Four, The Mystery of the Blue Train, The Secret Adversary, The Man in the Brown Suit, The Secret of Chimneys, The Seven Dials Mystery, & Partners in Crime
- By: Agatha Christie
- Narrated by: David Rintoul, Thomas Judd, Kristin Atherton, and others
- Length: 79 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Agatha Christie Collection is a collection of 11 classic detective novels from the queen of crime fiction. We accompany Hecule Poirot on his first 6 adventures, as well as embark on a journey into the beginning of the Tommy & Tuppence Mysteries and Colonel Race series.
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Wonderful book!
- By Anonymous User on 02-07-25
By: Agatha Christie
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The Best Short Stories 2024
- The O. Henry Prize Winners
- By: Amor Towles - editor, Jenny Minton Quigley - editor
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Kristen DiMercurio, Blair Young, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The prestigious annual story anthology, featuring prize-winning stories by Kate DiCamillo, Jess Walter, Dave Eggers, Allegra Goodman, Jai Chakrabarti, Francisco Gonzalez, and more.
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First several are Bleak, downers
- By Otis Lake on 04-07-25
By: Amor Towles - editor, and others
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A Brief History of Living Forever
- A Novel
- By: Jaroslav Kalfar
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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When Adéla discovers she has a terminal illness, she leaves behind her native Czech village for a chance at reuniting in America with Tereza, the daughter she gave up at birth, decades earlier. But the country Adéla experienced as a young woman, when she eloped with a filmmaker and starred in his cult sci-fi movie, has changed entirely. In 2030, America is ruled by an authoritarian government increasingly closed off to the rest of the world.
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Not so distant future
- By Kindle Customer on 05-14-23
By: Jaroslav Kalfar
Absolutely Incredible
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Even better than the published version
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Wonderful
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perfect voice
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essential audiblechoicethe road goes on foreverlet jack be your guide.
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An American classic
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What about John Ventimiglia’s performance did you like?
John Ventimiglia must have listened to the recordings of Kerouac, because he captured Kerouac's voice really well. Kerouac had a funny way of pronouncing words with a double o sound, (doom, gloom) and John nailed it.Any additional comments?
It's worth comparing the scroll with the first-published, edited, and censored version. The scroll is actually a better book.Better version
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P.S. I loved the narrator’s performance!
An honest classic
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lovely wild book.
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Incredible journey made better by the performance
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