{"id":384411,"date":"2026-03-14T06:53:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T06:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/384411\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T06:53:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T06:53:11","slug":"zach-bryan-buys-jack-kerouacs-on-the-road-scroll-for-12-1-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/384411\/","title":{"rendered":"Zach Bryan Buys Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ Scroll for $12.1 Million"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe purchaser of Jack Kerouac<\/a>\u2018s original On the Road manuscript, famously typed onto a nearly 120-foot scroll of paper, at Christie\u2019s Jim Irsay auction<\/a> on Thursday is country artist and Kerouac fanatic Zach Bryan<\/a>. Rolling Stone confirmed through a rep that Bryan placed the winning bid of $12,135,000 for the Beat generation relic.<\/p>\n

\n\tAuction house Christie\u2019s, which sold the item as part of the Jim Irsay Collection, had estimated On the Road to sell for between $2.5 million and $4 million. Irsay, the late owner of the Indianapolis Colts, had paid $2.43 million for the scroll in 2001, according to The Herald-Times<\/a>. At the time, Christie\u2019s confirmed it was the highest price anyone had ever paid for literature at auction.<\/p>\n

\n\tKerouac wrote On the Road over the course of three weeks in April 1951 using paper taped together. The scroll format allowed him to feed the paper through his typewriter at a speed that matched his thought pattern. The scroll notably used the real names of his friends, notably his close friend Neal Cassady and Beat generation luminaries William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Lucien Carr, among others, as he recounted bopping around the country in search of adventure. Upon its 1957 publication, with replacement names, On the Road turned Kerouac into the generation\u2019s leading voice.<\/p>\n

\n\tBryan, a confirmed Kerouac superfan who drew inspiration from On the Road for his \u201cBurn, Burn, Burn,\u201d purchased the Saint Jean Baptiste Church in Kerouac\u2019s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, last year. Billboard<\/a> reported at the time that he and the Jack Kerouac Estate hoped to turn the church, where Kerouac was once an altar boy and where Kerouac\u2019s funeral was held, into the Jack Kerouac Center.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been working on this deal with Zach and his team for several months,\u201d the Kerouac estate\u2019s Sylvia Cunha said at the time. \u201cHe stepped up and delivered in a big way, showing incredible generosity. Our immediate focus is to bring the building up to code so we can start using the space for music and other events while forming new partnerships to help us bring this vision to life and ensure its lasting success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe On the Road scroll was part of Christie\u2019s auction of Irsay\u2019s collection<\/a> of pop cultural and historically significant items. Notable items that hit the auction block included Ringo Starr\u2019s drums, Kurt Cobain\u2019s \u201cSmells Like Teen Spirit,\u201d and Pink Floyd frontman David Gilmour\u2019s famous \u201cBlack Strat,\u201d which Irsay bought for $3,975,000<\/a> in 2019. On Thursday, the Black Strat sold for $14.55 million<\/a>, making it the most expensive guitar ever sold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The purchaser of Jack Kerouac\u2018s original On the Road manuscript, famously typed onto a nearly 120-foot scroll of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,18,117,19,17,176035,14345],"class_list":{"0":"post-384411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-jack-kerouac","14":"tag-zach-bryan"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116226215298553012","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}