Jack Kerouac might just qualify for the hyperbolic title: “the wild man of American letters.” He did live fast, and, sadly, he did die young, in 1969, aged just 47. 

That truncated life means his published output of 12 novels is even more extraordinary, and a testament to some extremely high-speed writing. 

His most influential work On The Road was first drafted in a three-week period of furious writing in his Spontaneous Prose style. 

On the Road is Kerouac's most influential work, and the new story was written as part of its long birth. Good first edition copies of the book are now worth serious money. 

 

Along the way Kerouac generated a load of extraneous material. Writing that he often collected in note books or put out in self-published pamphlets that he gave to friends. 

But how did one of those typescripts end up in the papers of a New York Mafia leader slain in one of the most famous power battles of the Cosa Nostra? 

We may never know. 

But, the story in question, The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing, has now been sold privately after being lised on line for $8,500 (around £6,300). 

Literary detectives have much to excavate in the text, which is described as a lost chapter of On The Road, prepared as Kerouac gestated his greatest work. 

“Very significant,” is the verdict of British Kerouac scholar, Dave Moore. 

Was Paul Castellano a Kerouac fan? 

Keouac, photographed by Tom Palumbo. The writer didn't fit in with American society as it was and did his best to live outside it. 

It’s possible. But it hasn’t made any biographies I can find. 

We know Castellano ended up dead as the result of a power-grab by the notorious John Gotti, often known as the Dapper Don. 

One of Gotti’s beefs with his Gambino Family boss was that Castellano was too legit, not street enough, to be a mob boss. 

Perhaps the huge mansion Castellano had built to resemble the White House helped foster that view. 

It was in an estate sale of that home that the Kerouac manuscript was found. 

It was bought by Your Own Museum, a collectibles company from New York. 

It was listed and then sold this month by Your Own Museum with a published price of $8,500 (around £6,300).

It has been described as “very significant” by Kerouac specialist Dave Moore and sellers YOM say it looks like an attempt by Kerouac to develop the characters for his best-known work. Moore believes the story may have been written during Kerouac’s only known visit to the UK. 

The paper is signed in green, fountain-pen ink, and it was probably given by Kerouac to a San Francisco associate not long after he completed it in April 1957. 

How it travelled from there to a Mafia boss’s home is a mystery. 

Jerry Braunfield of YOM, told the Guardian: “Preceding the sale of the property [Castellano’s Long Island mansion], the beneficiaries organised a private auction of Castellano’s collection. The amount of time Castellano owned this piece is unknown, however it has never been seen on public records.”

Now, The Holy, the Beat, and Crazy Next Thing has a new home. 

The world’s most valuable Kerouac item, the huge scroll on which he composed On The Road, is now in private hands after it was bought by late billionaire Jim Irsay, but is occasionally loaned for museum display. 

Kerouac fans might wonder at the competitive price for this item and will certainly be hoping the contents of this latest and most unusual Kerouac find will be published in some form. 

And they will note that the Mafia-Don story is a perfect addition to Kerouac's legend. 

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