On the subterraneans and more - photo 1

On the subterraneans and more

Lot 224
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 859743
Lot 224 | On the subterraneans and more
Estimate value
$ 6 000 – 9 000
KEROUAC, Jack (1922-1969). Typed letter signed (“Jack”) to Ed White, 31 August [1953].

Quarto. Two leaves of onion skin; rectos only; light stains in one or two places; autograph postscript and a few emendations. With envelope addressed in type, postmarked Jamaica, New York.

“Burroughs is in town, is a big celebrity among the subterraneans.”

An intense missive written “by brakeman’s lantern,” Jack intersperses memories, fantasies, and future plans. Kerouac commissions White to undertake his building priorities: “Sir, ere you build my house’ll you design my crypt." In the beginning of the letter he lards his morbidity with particularly raunchy sexual fantasy and ignoble boasting. However, he moves on quickly to recount in meticulous detail a dream he had the night before about Hal and Ginger. A paragraph almost entirely of lower case letters is packed full, reporting on the waking reality of social hip nothingness, beginning with his description of the subterraneans, “a new gang of village heroes Ginsberg latched to.” He continues,

Burroughs having arrived with his dried telepathic vines is being lionized and loves it and by the coolest in fact coldest most intime interior hip group of all, they hang out in Fugazzi’s on 6th Avenue and Minetta Lane. The one thing I would commend both Burroughs and Ginsberg for is they continually dig the new elements in new generations and do not stagnate – and this new group tho interesting and modernly cold, as soon you’ll definitely be hearing of cold jazz and cold peace of course, bugs me because of limitations in education...

The rest covers the current scene – a love affair, the oppressive heat – and with anticipation of our fall reunion in “new yorkie,” he writes,

I’ll tell you more news of everything when I see you. It’s too hot to write a long letter, all I want you to know from this letter is that I do think of you and am waiting for your rearrival and have not stopt corresponding with you or communicating with you by any name ever. I’m writing that railroad novel madly now, “Wine in the Railroad Earth” so far the title is, and it’s all wild, I’ll show it to you in cold glad October over brews at the bloody good west end sire.

The letter closes with a penciled postscript: “Dear Ed / With you I would very much like to get drunk tonight!”
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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