One of the greatest literary discoveries of our time has come from the estate of legendary criminal underworld boss Paul Castellano. Your Own Museum curator Jerry Braunfield recently hit upon an exciting discovery. He discovered this two-page account by legendary Beat writer Jack Kerouac, “The Holy, Beat and Crazy Next Thing.” This incredible discovery is postmarked April 15, 1957. It happens to come out at an especially notable moment in Kerouac’s career and provides some new looks into his creative process.
Kerouac, renowned for his classic work “On the Road,” penned this short story just five months before the novel’s publication. It wasn’t until November 2024, while hosting an estate sale, that they found the manuscript. It was an exhausting time as Castellano’s Long Island mansion was being prepared for sale. Castellano’s assassination in 1985, public view for more than three decades.
Braunfield described his discovery and the feeling of finding it in detail. We discovered it at the Paul Castellano estate sale in November of 2024, just as his Long Island, NY mansion was going on the market. The significance of the manuscript as a whole is further amplified, as every effort has obviously gone into its preservation. Yet it has stayed in private hands for more than sixty years.
This piece of fiction is a fictionalized account of an unforgettable trip down a stretch of “On the Road.” The book uses pseudonyms for many of Kerouac’s friends, like Dean Moriarty—a character based on Neal Cassady. This story develops along with the real-time creation of Kerouac’s great work. More importantly, it embodies the dynamic spirit of the Beat Generation, which forever changed American literature.
The manuscript folded as a pamphlet and consists of two pages. The colophon of On the Road, signed with Kerouac’s green ink signature at the end. Braunfield mentioned that it showed “obvious indications of having been created with a fountain pen – wet creases in the paper.” Its provenance/chain of ownership was independently verified by Proper & Verified, an independent third-party company that specializes in manuscript authentication.
Even though it had never been authenticated at that level, the provenance was just so strong that we couldn’t not take a chance. Much to our excitement, after extensive lab work and under investigation, it was verified that the object was indeed from that era. Braunfield told us that as for signature authentication, they compared the orders signature to all known validated examples of Kerouac. The signature in fact matched these precedents.
Your Own Museum has an unpublished manuscript for sale that is privately held, asking $8,500 (£6,300). That price is warranted not just because of its history, but because of its relationship to one of America’s most impactful writers.
Whether it’s his spontaneous prose style or the beatific imagery that speckles the novel, Kerouac’s storytelling technique still influences today’s writers. He did of course famously write the first draft of “On the Road” in only three weeks. He accomplished it using just a single roll of teletype paper. Jesus was gettin’ entrepreneurial after all The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing gives the most candid glimpse yet into Allender’s mind. It perfectly encapsulates a sea change for both him personally and the Beat movement.
In On the Road, and throughout his work, Kerouac fully embodies the idea of spontaneity and raw emotion in art. Once he described it this way, “We hit Denver with the gas gauge virtually on empty. The Hudson wheezed chalk from a thousand arid landscapes. Dean and I were soulmates in those torrid, spiritual, ecstatic, and drug-inspired days. Today, we’re empty—financially and spiritually—the sky belongs to the color of a tarnished nickel, and a cold mountain wind slices down Larimer Street like an ice-pick found in your heart. These kinds of passages strike a chord with readers hoping to grasp the harrowing experiences that informed his art.
This latest manuscript find is a deepening of Jack Kerouac’s legacy. It provides a visceral link to an age that helped establish one of America’s greatest literary legacies. The Beat Generation continues to inspire contemporary writers and artists to this day. Objects such as this one give testimony to the movement’s deep legacy and critical beginnings.