For Sale: The Letter That Inspired Jack Kerouac to Write 'On the Road'
On December 17, 1950, a man sat down and penned a letter that would change American counter-culture forever. In a lively, honest, and breathless prose, Neal Cassady wrote nearly 16,000 words on 18 pages to Jack Kerouac, who later described the work as "the greatest piece of writing I ever saw."
Called the Joan Anderson Letter, the document became the inspiration for the Beat Generation of writers. "I got the idea for the spontaneous style of On the Road from seeing how good old Neal Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional, completely serious, all detailed, with real names in his case," Kerouac told The Paris Review in 1968. Kerouac, of course, would popularize his own version of the style in his 1957 American classic, On the Road.
It's a style that inspired Allen Ginsberg, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, and countless other writers and counter culture visionaries even today.
And, after being lost from the public view for 60 years-passed around by Ginsberg and considered lost at sea, then found in the remains of the Golden Goose Press-the letter is now up for auction. Available to bid on through Christie's Auction House through June 16, the letter is expected to go for as much as $600,000.
One portion of the letter begins:
"Dear Jack; To hell with the dirty lousy shit, I've had enough horseshit. I got my own pure little bangtail mind and the confines of its binding please me yet. I wake to more horrors than Celine, not a vain statement for now I've passed thru just repetitious shudderings and nightmare twitches. I have discovered new sure doom, but this is my secret, and if I'm to find the pleasure of its devulgance in recognizable form I must tighten my grip while abiding the wait of years."
