Fans of Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac marked the 50th anniversary of his novel On The Road by staging a marathon reading.

Close friends of the late author, who died from alcoholism in 1969, joined fans by taking turns reading his famous book aloud Saturday at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo.

The 12-hour reading kicked off the university's inaugural Kerouac Festival.

The stream-of-consciousness novel, written in 20 days in New York, became a cult hit and inspired the beatnik movement. 

Kerouac was buzzing on the stimulant Benzedrine at the time he wrote the novel, banging his thoughts out as quickly as they came to him.

On The Road is based on a cross-country trek that Kerouac took with his friend Neal Cassady, fuelled by drugs, alcohol, sex and jazz. 

Kerouac based the characters on himself and his friends, heralding a group of people who eschewed the materialism and conformity of society.

The three-day festival includes seminars about the intersection of Kerouac's writing with music and screenings of his films, including the 1959 documentary Pull My Daisy, narrated by the author himself.

Naropa has a long history with Beat artists. The late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg founded the summer writing program at the university in 1974. Called the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, it's now known as the Jack Kerouac School.

With files from the Associated Press