Beschreibung:

KEROUAC, JACK Typed letter signed with manuscript annotation regarding the Beat Generation, the San Francisco Renaissance, and On the Road . [New York:] 7 December 1960. One page typed letter signed "Jack Kerouac" in ink and with two manuscript annotations in the margins, the left margin with a vertically typed postscript, the letter addressed "Dear Miss Eileen". 11 x 8 1/2 inches (28.5 x 22 cm); framed with a portrait. Usual folds, the extremities somewhat mat-toned, the letter hinged to paper backing at upper corners only with some show through, very well preserved overall with strong type and a dark signature. An exceptional autobiographical letter from Jack Kerouac in response to a thesis student inquiring about his role in the birth of the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance. Opening with bravado, Kerouac claims to have started both literary movements. The Beat Generation is reported as started by Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes and Allen Ginsberg in 1948, the name inspired by the hipsters in Times Square, the movement devised "as a generation of individualists hitch hiking across the country, digging jazz, digging people." Turning introspective, there is comment on the double-meaning of the word "beatific" and mention of the Ste. Jeanne D'Arc Catholic church in Keroauc's hometown of Lowell, Mass. After the publication of On the Road in 1957, Kerouac notes "a genuine Communist and Leftwing Dissident infiltration of the movement" which he, Holmes and Ginsberg consciously avoided, and he closes the paragraph on the Beat Generation reporting that he now lives "quietly with my mother and meditate in my yard at night and pray and read and write (when not interrupted by beatnik visitors...)", this a fine reference to the Buddhism practiced by Kerouac and described in his On the Road follow-up, The Dharma Bums. As regards the San Francisco Renaissance, Kerouac describes Allen Ginsberg's reading of Howl at San Francisco's Gallery Six, a landmark event in 20th century literature ("I sat at the end of the stage with a jug of wine yelling 'Go!"). As above, Kerouac expresses dissatisfaction with the "glum" and "mediocre poets" who had recently co-opted the movement since he and Ginsberg left San Francisco. In a vertically typed postscript, this tour de force letter closes with an important comment on the novel that had made him a household name: "ON THE ROAD was a story about an ex-football player and an ex-cowboy driving around the country looking for girls, NOT a story about 'beatniks", this inserting a reference to On The Road's protagonist, the legendary Denver drifter Neil Cassady. While many Kerouac letters offer his voice and style, few directly comment on the years before On the Road was released and the effect of its publication, Ginsberg's reading of Howl, Kerouac's attempt at a quiet Buddhist life and the Catholicism to which he returned before his death in 1969. C