An unknown Kerouac manuscript found among the effects of a mafia boss

An unknown Kerouac manuscript has been found among the effects of a mafia boss. Evidently he, too, believed that real jazz is when they shoot off the beat.

Jack Kerouac, author of the cult novel On the Road and symbol of the Beat Generation. A film adaptation of the same name, starring Kristen Stewart and Sam Riley, came out in 2012. In Russia the book is still being reissued.

Almost 70 years after the novel's publication, an unknown text by Kerouac has come to light: a two-page manuscript, signed and dated 1957. Researchers believe it is a lost chapter of On the Road, since the style, the period and the characters all match the novel.

The story of the find is a curious one. For more than forty years the manuscript lay among the papers of Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family of New York, one of the most influential criminal organisations of the twentieth century. How Kerouac's literary artefact came to be in Castellano's possession remains unknown.

In 2024, at a sale of the mob boss's property, the manuscript was acquired by the New York company Your Own Museum, which collects and sells rare artefacts. After analysis of the paper and the handwriting, specialists confirmed the authenticity of the signature and the dating. The manuscript is now on sale for 8,500 dollars.

It seems to be the only case in which bodies and metaphors genuinely lay "on the road".