A 120 Foot Long Manuscript

My mom had just packed me 2 coolers worth of food. I like my mom a lot because sometimes she cooks me a lot of food and puts it into little containers so I can put them in my freezer and eat them later. It beats McDonald's for sure and since I lack culinary talents, it makes even more sense. They were sitting in the back of my car as I pulled onto I-25 south and headed towards Denver. I was lured by the city to once again enter its domain. Since I had the day to blow and would rather do it in Denver than in Colorado Springs, I exited.

I was in LoDo so I headed to the Tattered Cover, an old used bookstore. With a wide variety of magazines to choose from, I entertained myself a few hours, meandering about the floors, peeking at architecture books. On one of the landings I saw a sign saying something about Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," being displayed @ the Denver Public Library. I thought it worth checking out so I headed up the 16th street mall. There are a bunch buses that run up and down this street for free so I jumped aboard, careful to look cool doing so. That's one thing I don't like about doing things alone. For some reason all of my actions become a lot more calculated, and I find myself contemplating each and every motion I take. I can't explain it but it feels somewhat selfish and prideful.

Along this strip, you can find any sort of person you want, a businessmen, a highschooler, a gangsta, a panhandler, a mom, a robot, a cigarette. It is fun because this area forces together a myriad of demographics causing the occasional shocking instance. Alone I witnessed everything and everyone safe behind my headphones. If you wanna avoid talking to people, put on headphones. I was thirsty so I went into Jimmy John's to purchase a beverage. Since it is a physical impossibility to enter Jimmy John's without ordering a Slim #5, I did so and relished in my most wonderful vice. I don't know if you can beat salami, capicola, provolone, mayo and mustard on the best bread in the world.

I continued up 16th street until I reached its terminus. I could see Michael Graves' library in the distance, so I made my way towards it. To say the least, this library is somewhat dissapointing compared to some of his other achievements like the St. Colleta school in Washington D.C. Graves uses a language that works at a much smaller scale as seen in St. Colleta. His intention is clear and speaks for itself. The library seems to lose some of this clarity as the program becomes larger and more varied. What was simple about his St. Colleta design, has now become confusing and useless. The other thing that really bothers me about the library is the vertical circulation. Unless one is willing to find the elevator, which was difficult to do, one must take a series of escalators up each floor. This process is very time consuming and offers nothing new to the experience. I can understand an elaborate circulation system if it's trying to say something and take one on an interesting journey. This is not the case however and leaves the everyone tired and yet again confused.

Enough architectural analysis. After I got inside, I asked the security guard where I could find this exhibit. He told me to go to the 5th floor. As I reached the top floor, I could see what I had come for. Before me lay the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." Kerouac had written this entire book in a 21 day sitting. He was also known to be a really fast typer and he hated changing out sheets every few minutes. He bought come long pieces of chinese paper and taped them together to form one long scroll. He typed the whole thing single spaced with no margins. They didn't have the space to unroll the whole thing so I could only see about a 30 ft. stretch of it. It was bought at auction sometime in the 90's for 2.6 million dollars. I looked at it for awhile and then I left to do other stupid things.