Zach Bryan has purchased Jack Kerouac’s original On the Road scroll, The Dharma Bums scroll and a collection of personal letters at auction, and is set to donate the literary treasures to a new museum in the author’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts.
The items had previously been part of a massive pop culture collection amassed by billionaire Jim Irsay, who died last May.
Kerouac typed his bestselling novel On the Road as a continuous manuscript scroll in 1951 without paragraph breaks or chapter divisions. It is 120ft long by 9in wide with hundreds of sheets of paper taped together end to end in a single roll.
Irsay paid the equivalent of $3.2 million for the scroll in 2001. Earlier this week, Bryan bought it for $12,135,000.
The 29-year-old country music star is a noted Kerouac fan, who last year purchased the historic former Saint Jean Baptiste Church in Lowell so that it can be transformed into the Jack Kerouac Center.
In a statement to The Independent, Jim Sampas, the literary executor of Kerouac’s estate, said: “Kerouac admirers will often tell you that after traveling all over the country, Jack would inevitably return to his hometown. In the wake of breaking yet another world record, America's most influential work will also be coming back to Lowell thanks to our friend Zach Bryan.
“It was the place where this high school football star's journey as a writer began, before he used those athletic traits to create this legendary ‘road’ scroll in two and a half weeks. And this return will draw folks from all over the world to our city, to glimpse with their own eyes the manuscript that changed it all. We thank Zach for his understanding of this.”
Lowell City Manager Thomas A. Golden Jr. added: “On behalf of the City of Lowell, we deeply appreciate Mr. Bryan's commitment to honoring Jack Kerouac's legacy and his investment in enriching Lowell's cultural landscape.
“Bringing these historic works back to their hometown and into the Jack Kerouac Center not only preserves and celebrates our cultural heritage but also strengthens Lowell's role as a destination for arts, culture, and economic growth."
Kerouac died in 1969, at the age of 47. Marking the centenary of his birth in 2022, his collaborator David Amram told The Independent: “He would always say, with that Lowell accent: ‘Davey, I’m an author. I want people to read my books.’ Today, people are reading his books all over the world and it is so gratifying to see that.”
