"Just us old friends" - photo 1

"Just us old friends"

Lot 237
07.12.2022 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 2 400
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 859756
Lot 237 | "Just us old friends"
Estimate value
$ 4 000 – 6 000
KEROUAC, Jack (1922-1969). Typed letter signed (“Jack”) to Ed White, 27 May 1964. Unpublished.

Octavo. Bifoliate leaf, one page covered; light paperclip impression. With envelope addressed in type, postmarked Northport, New York.

"Yessir, and thanks for spending all that money on drinks. I’ll make it up to you in Denver.”

White would visit Kerouac in 1964 and described a house that was neat as a pin, with both Jack and his “Ma” as scrubbed and dressed in spotless attire. Jack gave them a complete tour: his bedroom had a heavy wooden bed and his favorite rundown upholstered chair, with a small side table for his “favorite books.” On the wall at the head of the bed was a gaudy red light illuminating a sign that read “Genius at Work,” a gift from Mémère. He was on a regular work schedule, with a six-pack of beer in the neatly arranged refrigerator, and a bottle of red wine.

During the visit, Jack described hippies climbing over his fence to visit their spiritual father – a terrible stress to solitary Jack, who wanted no part of the Beat generation. A few years later in a 1967 Paris Review interview he would reflect that the Beats “just wanted some youth movement to grab onto for their own political and social purposes. I had nothing to do with any of that. [...] I was a loner.” He would also remark, “Notoriety and public confession in literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me.”

As a result, White promised to design a hideaway cabin in the Colorado Mountains for him, where he could escape from the hustle and bustle of New York. In the present letter, Jack goes into detail about the “hideaway cabin way off in the back hills where there’s timber, water aplenty and far from the main roads. Just a simple (well-insulated tho) one-room shanty with woodstove and simple table and chair. We would be careful not to bring any NEW people up there, just us old friends (Bev, Justin, etc. Hal, etc.) because new people keep brining new people who in turn bring new people (to meet the atuhor, or rather, to go witness the idiot and finally you have to sell and leave...” He looks forward to setting up “Ma’s hideaway” in St. Petersburg, Florida, writing, “Then I looks into you for my hideaway, which will make two hideaways etc.”
Auction house category:Letters, documents and manuscripts
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