The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn..."

In April 1951, when Kerouac typed these words onto two scrolls during a manic three-week rampage that resulted in the first draft of his novel On the Road, some of the mad ones he referred to were Neal Cassady, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. These were a mere handful of the major personalities at the core of the so-called Beat Generation of the 1950s and what became known as the San Francisco Renaissance. One of Kerouac's many biographers, Dennis McNally (later to become the Grateful Dead's publicist), wrote of this rebellious group of truth-seekers: "These few pilgrims were mystics who rejected materialism and rationalism as the highest level of reality in a nation that went to church but believed in a mechanical universe... a people who celebrated optimism, consumerism and conformity."

We're talking about the post-WWII 1950s, when the masses sought to escape the daily terror of the Cold War and impending nuclear destruction by filling their lives with gadgetry like toaster ovens, electric can openers and all-new TV game shows. Today, that consumer frenzy swells as Americans flee the chaos and distress of international terrorism via high-def TV and MP3s. (To be non-conformist today is to get the new cell phone model before everyone else. Or, better yet, at the bar: He who delivers the most meaningless trivia in the wittiest way gets laid. Yep, the streets are teeming with armies of neo-James Deans who received their educations from pop-up trivia bubbles on VH1.) Which begs the question: Where are the new and much-needed visionaries of the technological age?

But an even more pressing question on the threshold of the 50th anniversary of On the Road: Is the celebration just more nostalgic drift or is Kerouac's masterpiece still relevant?

"It has relevancy because it's outside of [young people's] experience," says Paul Maher, author of the forthcoming Jack Kerouac's American Journey: The Real Life Odyssey of On the Road. (Thunder's Mouth, Sept. 2007) "Their experience is only a virtual reality. It's not a real thing. You might live vicariously through Kerouac and never go beyond On the Road and stay in your house. But I think some people will actually say, 'Hell, I'm young. I don't have a mortgage. I don't have people to support. I can go out there and do this.' In essence, you have the whole pioneer spirit. Our forefathers crossed the country in covered wagons. That's the spirit that Kerouac tried to capture, even though it was in a car. This essence is there because it's still a bold undertaking."

As part of the book's 50th birthday, on Aug. 16 Viking will release On the Road: The Original Scroll, a book version minus edits made by Kerouac himself. The original scroll was sold to Indianapolis Colts owner James Irsay in 2001 for $2.43 million. Recently on exhibit at the Denver Public Library, the 120-foot-long single-spaced paragraph is now on display in Lowell, Mass., for the celebration taking place in Kerouac's hometown.

Naropa will also be celebrating this epic anniversary with their Kerouac Festival, June 30–July 2, featuring panel discussions, musical performances, film showings and a marathon reading of On the Road. Of course, they will be reading from the published book, not the grueling original that Kerouac cranked out during his mad writing binge.

"Just imagine reading an e-mail that's single-spaced and over 100-feet long," says Maher. "People like John Clellon Holmes said it was headache inducing."

Maher says he enjoyed reading the scroll edition more than the original 1957 release because the scroll is so much more like Kerouac, more experimental with less editing. "In the book," Maher continues, "Sal Paradise says (and I paraphrase), 'Men won't learn until they throw themselves at their women's feet.' But in the scroll it actually goes into this whole train of thought ending with apocalypse. It's really wild stuff. We also have side trips that were cut out, and they got lost several times during the trip."

When Jack Kerouac died in October 1969, his estate was worth about $91, but in 2004 Kerouac had an estimated $20 million connected to his name — a fabulous sum of money. And it makes you wonder, "How could the 'King of the Beats' or 'Father of the Hippies' (media tags that Kerouac loathed) die penniless?" The same media that once ridiculed and taunted the author later transformed him into a literary giant through revisionism of an ever-expanding mythos that seems to balloon in tandem with the size of his estate. Each generation continues to grab hold of On the Road, claiming it as its own, and in the process reinterpreting its substance.

"It still has lessons for us," says New York Times reporter John Leland, author of the forthcoming Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think) (Viking, Aug. 2007). "It still appeals to that sense of open adventure and freedom, and also, underneath it, that striving to figure out who you're going to be in the world. It's still a rite of passage for young American readers, mostly male, but hopefully female, as well. You know, when it came out in '57 the big book was Peyton Place, and Peyton Place now is such a fossil. On the Road still feels like a modern book. Peyton Place is meant to be an indictment of its times. On the Road is a reaction to its times."

Along with the recent unearthing of Jack's journals and letters, which are providing new insights and renewed fascination with all things Kerouac, comes a flood of new biographies and books delving deeper into the Beat landscape. Leland's approach to On the Road is fresh in that it tries to interpret and impart on us what he calls Kerouac's "lessons."

"There are three On the Roads that we deal with: There's the book we read and we think we know, and that seems to be the story of two wild-and-crazy guys bombing around the country in search of kicks. Then there's the book that Kerouac thought he wrote, which was a somber and powerfully depressing book about two Catholic spiritual seekers in search of God — and they found Him. That's how Kerouac described the book. But it's really somewhere in between the two. There really is this spiritual search and the search for how to live your life."

Kerouac Festival

Saturday, June 30, at 1 p.m.

On the Road Marathon Reading

Naropa University, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303-245-4600.

Sunday, July 1, at 11 a.m.

Jack Kerouac's Literary Legacy

Naropa University, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303-245-4600.

Sunday, July 1, at 1p.m.

The Musical Kerouac

Naropa University, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, 303-245-4600.

Sunday, July 1, at 3:30 p.m.

Robert Frank's Kerouac Films

Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th Street, Boulder, 303-443-2122.

Sunday, July 1, at 8 p.m.

The Kerouac Gala

Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030.

Monday, July 2, at 8 p.m.

Kerouac School Alumni Reading

Laughing Goat Coffee House, 1709 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-440-4628.

For more information contact Naropa at 303-245-4600, or www.naropa.edu.

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com