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On the Road with the Beats

Presented by Harry Ransom Center at Harry Ransom Center

February 5-August 3, 2008

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This exhibition will take visitors on a journey through the cities, landscapes, and communities that fostered and shaped the most important works of the Beat Generation, from the early 1940's to the mid-1960's. Writers such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Gregory Corso are deeply identified with cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Tangier, Calcutta, London, and Paris. Indeed, without 'visiting' these places one cannot truly grasp the nature of the Beat scene. Presses in London and Paris printed writings that had been deemed obscene in the United States; a poetry reading in San Francisco vaulted Ginsberg's 'Howl' to the sphere of literary myth; and Neal Cassady's scrawled description of a bus ride to Kansas City sparked Jack Kerouac's method of 'spontaneous prose.' The exhibition places the Ransom Center's most important Beat holdings into geographical context and includes special sections that highlight important themes such as jazz, marriage, and the beatnik phenomenon of the late 1950's. Jack Kerouac's scroll manuscript of On the Road, on loan from the collection of Jim Irsay, will be on display from March 7 through June 1. The first 48 feet of this 120-foot 'page' will be visible in the gallery. This visually stunning first draft has no paragraph or chapter breaks, and the characters are all referred to by their real names.