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Why did Jack Kerouac oppose revising his writing?

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Portrait of Jack Kerouac, American novelist and poet, looking over his shoulder in a collared shirt, circa 1965. — Jack Kerouac American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, c. 1965.

Jack Kerouac’s opposition to revising his writing was rooted in his commitment to the principle of "First thought, best thought". He believed that the act of revision was a form of "literary lying," as it imposed a structure that distanced the work from the raw, authentic "truth of the moment".1

For Kerouac, his "true-life" novels were intended to capture pure, unadulterated language, unobstructed by the artificiality of editing. He viewed his writing process as a form of "spontaneous bop prosody," often comparing himself to a jazz musician who develops an image in a "semi-trance" state, allowing the language to be governed by sound and poetic effects like alliteration and assonance rather than conscious, linear correction. By avoiding traditional revision, he sought to maintain the immediacy and vitality of his creative expression.12

Despite this stance, Kerouac was not entirely opposed to all forms of refinement; he was more exacting with haiku and frequently "revised" his broader narrative by recasting stories across different books within his Legend of Duluoz series.1