Jack Kerouac’s 37-metre-long original scroll of ‘On the Road’ to be auctioned

Kerouac taped together long sheets of tracing paper so he would not have to stop typing to change pages. As Weintraub explained: “When you roll it out it actually looks like a road. There are no paragraphs or chapters, and it uses the real names of the characters before the publisher asked Kerouac to change them.”

Although On the Road was published in 1957 after heavy editing, it went on to become a landmark of post-war American literature, capturing the Beat Generation’s rejection of materialism, social rules and conventional life.

The auction has revived old debate about who should own such a work. When the scroll was last sold in 2001, Carolyn Cassady the former wife of Neal Cassady, who inspired the character Dean Moriarty criticised the sale. Calling it “blasphemy”, she said the manuscript belonged in a public library, adding: “If they auction it, anybody rich could buy it and keep it out of sight.”

Jim Irsay, who died last year, was best known as the owner of the NFL team the Indianapolis Colts. Over decades, he built a vast collection of manuscripts, musical instruments and cultural objects, many of which he regularly loaned for public display.

Weintraub said she hopes the scroll will remain accessible. “I personally hope that a public institution will buy it so it can be seen by everyone,” she told The Guardian. “But we can also hope that if someone privately buys it, they will show it publicly, as Jim Irsay did.”

Around 400 items from the Jim Irsay Collection will be displayed free to the public at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza galleries from 6 to 12 March. Other highlights include Paul McCartney’s handwritten lyrics for Hey Jude, papers linked to the Beatles’ break-up, Sylvester Stallone’s handwritten Rocky notes and a journal kept by Jim Morrison.