Jack Kerouac’s 1952 pencil sketch (seen below) for the cover of his novel On the Road, presumably made hastily, is an expression of the propulsive energy of his prose style. The highway converging toward the distant horizon, with the names of major cities ranged equidistantly from west to east, the rapid diagonal hatching and scumbling of the charcoal in the upper left corner, and the repeated surname disappearing into the bottom of the page as the highway slips past, all combine to create a sense of forward movement. We view the figure on the bottom left—a rearview portrait of Kerouac himself, complete with saxophone case inscribed “Doctor Sax”—as if hovering over his right shoulder, or as if from the cab of a truck barreling down upon him. His drawing is kinetic, albeit naive in its visual execution, and feels almost cinematic. Kerouac knew that if this sketch were to be adopted for the cover of the book it would almost certainly have to be re-drawn by a commercial artist working for the publisher, but it gives us a clear insight into how he wished his novel to be presented to its first readers.
After he completed his sketch (one of 250 objects featured in the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures) Kerouac rolled this sheet of paper onto his typewriter and typed a note to Aaron A. Wyn, the owner of Ace Books, a new paperback imprint that Wyn had recently founded in New York City. Wyn was the uncle of Carl Solomon, a close friend of Allen Ginsberg, and Kerouac hoped that he might publish On the Road as an Ace paperback. He told his would-be publisher: “I submit this as my idea of an appealing commercial cover expressive of the book. The cover for ‘The Town and the City’ was as dull as the title and the photo backflap. Wilbur Pippin’s photo of me is the perfect On the Road one. . . it will look like the face of the figure below. / J.K.”
The original cover sketch for On The Road.
Wilbur Pippin’s 1950 photographic portrait of Kerouac shows the clean-shaven young author, movie-star handsome, wearing a white shirt and tie and a dark blazer. The only concession to bohemianism is the turned up collar of his tweed trench coat. He appears smart and respectable, not at all the iconic representative of what would become known—much to Kerouac’s annoyance—as the “Beat Generation.”
In the published text of the novel, which would not appear in print until 1957 and, sadly, without Kerouac’s cover design, most of the transcontinental travel is by car. This sketch is a reminder that Kerouac began his own journey on the road by foot, as a hitchhiker, and his archive at the New York Public Library’s Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature contains diaries from his first trip between July and October 1947, including a carefully drawn map of his entire route. These would later become the basis for the itineraries that Kerouac also sketched out when drafting On the Road.
I remember the excitement I felt the first time I encountered Kerouac’s drawing when, 15 years ago, I processed the entire Kerouac archive at NYPL. This drawing, along with John Cohen’s candid photograph of Kerouac, taken in New York’s Chinatown in 1959, are among the 250 items featured in The Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures, which showcases items spanning 4,000 years from the Library's research collections.
This story is part of our partnership with the NYPL around the exhibition. We'll be publishing one NYC-related object a day throughout September, and you can see everything at gothamist.com/treasures. The Treasures exhibition opens Friday, September 24th, 2021 at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Free timed tickets are available here.
