English heritage and other topics - photo 1

English heritage and other topics

Lot 235
07.12.2022 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 4 800
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 859754
Lot 235 | English heritage and other topics
Estimate value
$ 6 000 – 9 000
KEROUAC, Jack (1922-1969). Typed letter signed (“Jack”) to Ed White [9 February 1962]. Unpublished.

Quarto. Single leaf; recto only; autograph postscript, ink; thin strip missing from bottom margin (appears as though a final sentence was carefully torn away. With envelope addressed in autograph, postmarked Orlando, Florida. and bearing autograph note, “Nothing in Mexico I know of, or like.”

"English is the grooviest language!”

Kerouac was preoccupied with genealogy at the time of this letter and was enjoying his newfound status as an Englishman from Cornwall, whose ancestors had crossed the Channel in the Cornish rebellion. “So I am an Englishman as much as Johnson, a Celt as much as Boswell, and a mutton chopper as much as Blanco” – to which he adds, “Thank God I’m not really French, as I think Hal Chase wd. sigh in my shoes.”

Neal had recently been in Denver “to look up his paw,” Jack reports. “Seems like me and Neal are all washed up now.” “Early promise has evaporated in a slue of evil underworld connections.” Neal, he explains, “has the most brilliant Jesuit mind in the country, ackshaly – You overlooked all of you his early Jesuit teaching in Denver – You orter hear him nowadays expounding the New Testament but all twisted up with Atlantis and rebirth and ‘Jesus spent 10 years in India’ and other California cult matters.”

Jack’s letter reveals a connectedness to Denver even then, fifteen years after his first visit in 1947. His excitement had faded, but his memories were warm and sentimental: “I’d like to see you again and have a good time around the fireplace and I wd. sure like some of them gourmet dishes of Justin’s and maybe Hal wd consent to a battle of wits with his old master Jack.” The imagined meeting never materialized.

At that time Jack was planning to move back to Cape Cod with “Mémère” and “finally fulfill her life’s dream of living by the sea.” He had sold Big Sur, planned to write narration for a Gauguin documentary, and referred to other work. “Actually,” he concludes, “I suspect nothing will happen – Money isnt in my star.” He couldn’t begin to imagine the immense success that lay ahead for everything he had written.
Auction house category:Letters, documents and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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23.11.2022 – 07.12.2022
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