Kerouac, Jack | Typed letter signed to his girlfriend Lois Sorrells; "I’ll end up with my ass in the straw" - photo 1

Kerouac, Jack | Typed letter signed to his girlfriend Lois Sorrells; "I’ll end up with my ass in the straw"

Lot 59
08.12.2023 12:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 4 000
AuctioneerSotheby´s
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1108798
Lot 59 | Kerouac, Jack | Typed letter signed to his girlfriend Lois Sorrells; "I’ll end up with my ass in the straw"
Estimate value
$ 4 000 – 6 000
Kerouac, Jack
Typed letter signed (“Jack” in pencil), to his girlfriend Lois Sorrells (later Beckwith) in New York City

One page (215 x 140 mm), n.p., n.d. [Northport, New York, early January 1960]; single-spaced, integral blank leaf.

“Maybe my Mother is right when she says I'll end up with my ass in the straw.”

At the time Kerouac was living with his mother in Northport, on Long Island, hoping to start a new book he was calling Beat Traveller (later abandoned after 40,000 words). “... I stay home now for a thousand years [he had gone into Manhattan for New Year’s parties with Allen Ginsberg and friends] except to bring my mother to Radio City and Chinatown on her birthday Feb. 4th. And for the world premiere of Subterraneans movie [in June, based on his novel] ... Am sending a check for 40 to Allen [Ginsberg] to cover the long taxi fare, the food, bottles, taxis etc ... Maybe my mother is right when she says I’ll end up with my ass in the straw, which were better than taxes and death letters on desk. I used to say to my mother ‘I’m going to write now, I’ll be in the kitchen when I’m hungry’ but now all I say is ‘I’m going to write letters now’ ... O last night I dream’d a perfect page of prose, the ‘best of Eugene O’Neill’ it said in the dream, all about a freighter at dusk and men leaning on he gunwale smoking pipes. Like Coleridge, lost it ... call Tom Payne [at Avon Books] and tell him to pick up Tristessa, he wants it right away and everything [is] mixed up eightball [Avon would published the book later in the spring]. I walked in the rain and even Dody [Muller, another girlfriend] wouldn’t let me in — and I heard you laugh gayly over the phone. But I am too old and wise and I’m safe for 1000 years.”
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