"Freed from anxiety about success" - photo 1
"Freed from anxiety about success" - photo 2

"Freed from anxiety about success"

Lot 211
07.12.2022 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 5 500
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 859730
Lot 211 | "Freed from anxiety about success"
Estimate value
$ 7 000 – 10 000
KEROUC, Jack (1922-1969). Typed letter signed (“Jack”) to Ed White, with pencil sketch of the Buick, “the Livornese special,” 26 April 1950. Unpublished.

"All I want to do is live well, love well, and write well, and that can be done; and long’s I’ve got a bunch of good friends like you and Tom, and a good girl, who cares?”

Jack’s two-page letter is full of new optimism and contentment with his life at that moment, with plans to drive to Denver in Tom Livornese’s father’s Buick, “intact and high.” The letter is even illustrated with a drawing of the car, the “Livornese Special,” crossing the plains, and arriving in Denver. Foaming mug in hand, he looks out over the streets of the city, the Windsor Hotel, and the Rossonian Jazz Bar. To help pay for the trip, Jack would cash in the plane ticket his publisher provided to get him to Denver for the book-signing. "New year: Paris! And maybe next Fall! (Would be a good honey-moon for me, hey pal, hey boy?) Reason for all this exuberance: I've been freed from anxiety about success; am successful enough; they all can go to; I'll make it; got an English publisher; article set for Flair; will soon have novel serialized (in Lowell); having Hollywood jobs offered (20th Century); what does it matter?"

“In my exuberance of the past month, and of love,” Jack writes, “I’ve suddenly lost my Sam Johnson style of writing to you, but just last night I had an immense urge to have you seated with me at coffee after dinner chatting about the million-and-one wonderful facts and speculations that crowd the world. There’s no beginning and no end to what we could talk about.”
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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