Kerouac, Jack | Autograph letter to Allen Ginsberg; "There was much drinking and much charming madness" - photo 1
Kerouac, Jack | Autograph letter to Allen Ginsberg; "There was much drinking and much charming madness" - photo 2

Kerouac, Jack | Autograph letter to Allen Ginsberg; "There was much drinking and much charming madness"

Lot 38
08.12.2023 12:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 7 000
AuctioneerSotheby´s
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1108757
Lot 38 | Kerouac, Jack | Autograph letter to Allen Ginsberg; "There was much drinking and much charming madness"
Estimate value
$ 7 000 – 10 000
Kerouac, Jack
Autograph letter to Allen Ginsberg, at the Maritime Training Station in Sheepshead Bay

2 1/2 pages (214 x 138 mm) written in pencil on a bifolium, numbered [I]-III, [Ozone Park], 17 August 1945; some light creasing and spotting along folds.

"There was much drinking and much charming madness."

In the summer and fall of 1945, Kerouac was spending more time in Ozone Park, in part to be closer to his father, who was ailing. At his parents' insistence, he found a job working for a month as a busboy at a summer camp. Kerouac opens the letter by regaling Ginsberg with a lengthy anecdote about an encounter he had with a "yiddish kopfe" on the train ride back from camp:

"Returning from the summer camp I had occasion to sit next to a yiddishe kopfe ... I was reading 'The Counterfeiters' [by Andre Gide] ... when my companion reached out and took the book out of my hand. I was pleased with his informality. 'Ah very good book!' he said, prodding me with his finger. 'Ah very valuable book!' 'Yes? You like it?' Nodding, he thereupon opened the book (whilst I thought a treatise on some of the choicer scenes was forthcoming) and removed the jacket. The jacket he examined very carefully, smoothing it lovingly with his fingers ... I said, 'do you want to read it? If you wish, I'll read another book I have here in my bag' ... So I went on with Plato while he, perhaps improperly ... how could he know?! continued to sigh over and fondle our good friend Andre Gide."

Moving on to their contemporaries, he writes: "Bill [Burroughs] is in town ... We went out with Jack & Eileen. Bill and I didn't talk much. There was much drinking and much charming madness. In the end Bill and I were alone trying to pick up women." Ginsberg, meanwhile, was living at the U.S. Maritime Training Station in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn — an unlikely naval recruit whose three-month service stint ended in the sick bay with pneumonia. From his sick bed he wrote amorous letters to Kerouac, prompting the the closing remarks in the present correspondence:

"One last thing. When you write letters to me, try not to be sophomorically moribund about your criticism of Jean [Jack's given name] et son weltanschauung. A little more finesse, please, or if possible add a touch of cynicism ... Never would you subscribe to 'Thomas Wolfish fiery rejection and romantic disapproval' et toutes ca. It pains me, my friend, it pains me."
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