Book Shocker: Kerouac's On The Road Apparently Edited

When Jack Kerouac wrote his rambling classic On the Road hopped up on coffee and benzedrine in 1951, he scotch-taped one piece of paper to the next in his typewriter to make a huge scroll. Applying the pseudo-zen principle of “first thought, best thought” to his writing, Kerouac just churned through the text all at once, writing the book without editing himself. That task was left for an editor six years later, who evidently took out a lot of references to drugs and sex in fitting with Eisenhower Era standards.