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LOWELL, MASS. (WHDH) – Country music star Zach Bryan has purchased an original scroll written by late Lowell-based author Jack Kerouac, to be displayed in a new Jack Kerouac Center when it opens in a few years. <\/p>\n
The GRAMMY-winning artist bought Kerouac\u2019s On the Road (1957) scroll and other historic items for more than $12 million at auction. <\/p>\n
On the Road was inspired by Kerouac\u2019s travels across the United States, and it still has a broad cultural influence. His estate says the work \u201cchallenged conventional form and was part of the most important literary and artistic movement of the 1950s.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scroll was typed in 1951, it was typed over three weeks,\u201d said Sylvia Cunha, Marketing and Business Development Director of the Jack Kerouac Estate. \u201cIt is on long sheets of contact paper and he just wanted to keep on writing without stopping, so he called it spontaneous prose.\u201d<\/p>\n
The novel was the inspiration for Bryan\u2019s hit song Burn Burn Burn. <\/p>\n
In May 2025, Bryan also purchased the former Saint Jean Baptiste Church in Lowell, where Kerouac served as an altar boy, and mourners gathered for his funeral mass in 1969. The church is currently being remodeled and will become the home of the Jack Kerouac Center \u2013 an incoming cultural hub that will feature exhibits, live music, public readings, and community events.<\/p>\n
Cunha said Kerouac used a continuous roll of paper in a typewriter because he wanted the flow of his writing to be spontaneous and uninterrupted by paper changes. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt came in a little box and I\u2019m standing next to it, and then when he laid it out, it\u2019s just nothing like you\u2019ve ever seen because it is single spaced, there is almost no margins, no paragraph breaks, it kind of looks like a roll of film than anything else,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
In addition to that scroll, Bryan also purchased another piece of literary history. <\/p>\n
\u201cZach also won The Dharma Bums scroll which was about finding spiritual exploration, so you have these two dynamic scrolls,\u201d said Cunha. \u201cHe had the church and now you have to put stuff in it, and what do you put that is just historical? The scrolls.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both pieces are now set to be on display when the Kerouac Center opens in a few years. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe On the Road scroll is 120 feet and The Dharma Bums scroll is 60 feet,\u201d said Cunha. \u201cWe\u2019re just so excited. They\u2019ve never been shown together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cunha said the On the Road scroll is in good condition, except for one piece that Kerouac\u2019s dog bit off. <\/p>\n
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