On the Road Trip

In one of those floating AP Wire stories (that we were promised when Patricia Johnson appeared to abdicate her position as the Houston Chronicle's art critic back in November) the Chron puffs up the most recent incarnation of a Beatnik exhibit at UT in Austin.

"Kerouac's original manuscript is on display at the University of Texas' Ransom Center cultural archive as the centerpiece of the "On the Road with the Beats" exhibit tracing the influence of the mid-century movement and its leaders, from Kerouac to poets Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs."

Apparently the Ransom Center at UT has missing parts of On The Road, pages from notebooks that were fundamental to the final manuscript- Kerouac claimed to have written 32,000 words in a period of the late 1940s.

"Although he had been thinking about the novel for several years, he put it all on paper in a frenzy. The scroll, which would stretch 120 feet if completely unrolled, lacks the paragraph, chapter and section breaks of the published novel. It includes some material that was taken out in editing, such as rough language and homosexual content."


So, speaking of Patty Johnson, when does adding your middle name Covo to your byline mean the same thing as losing your job?

UPDATE: "Freelance" now.