Below, Jack Kerouac writes Neal Cassady after taking the recently completed manuscript of On the Road to Robert Giroux’s office at Harcourt. The novel was rejected, and moreover made a poor impression on Cassady, who told Allen Ginsberg that Kerouac “must either forget it or enlarge it into a mighty thing that merely uses what he’s written as Book 1.” Cassady later ended up liking the book because of the “trust” he had in Kerouac’s vision, but maintained that the themes of the novel were too “trivial.” Below, the content of Kerouac’s letter is said to be limited due to “personal tragedy,” as he had just parted from his wife, Joan Haverty. After learning that she was pregnant, Kerouac denied that he was the father, claiming that Haverty must have been unfaithful.
June 10 1951
[New York City]
Pops,
Now I sit here, with a sore phlebitis foot, my book finished, handed in, waiting for the word from Giroux, a book about you and me, I sit here, my wife’s not here, she’s at her mother’s, presumably tomorrow I move out and we part, I don’t know what to do, where to go, on June 20 I may have a thousand dollars or more, meanwhile I stay with Lucien and Allen in loft which Liz-girl left, where do I go, what do I do now and I write to you old pal with a few brews on my left, my black cat sleeping, the last night in this pad…
And what I really wanted to do was write you a big letter about the night in back of Jerry Newman’s record store blasting with Mezz Mezzrow and the owner of a Harlem niteclub and a colored gal and the music we played and recorded etc. and the kicks I got digging people but personal tragedy since obtruded my plan and all I want to talk about is myself, damn it son of a bitch. I get as much hung up, man, as you ever did in your most hungup days and at a time after I really wrote a great book, my very best, one of the best to be published this year anywhere (or next Jan.) and wrote it too in 20 days as I say and I feel the pull and strain of having to type with a rusty typewriter like this and a dull ribbon that won’t enact my tones and so, also; with a few brews my fingers flail and less than fly as usual. I tell you another, I wrote that book on COFFEE… remember said rule. Benny, tea, anything I KNOW none as good as coffee for real mental power kicks. If you were here and since you can’t talk any more I would regale you with the story as it stands…of me…but have to bat out. You know I dig your pain in any kind of writing. Remember! COFFEE! (try it, please). You are a great writer Neal and if don’t believe me maybe you will believe me when everyone hails me as great writer within next few years. Immediately starting still another novel, this summer, soon as I sit somewhere whether banks of Seine pad or anywhere… 3c glass pernods in Casablanca country; or anywhere; Peru, Mexico City, great Marseilles, or Seymour-London, anywhere…Too drunk to write and Ah Neal and I had so much MUCH to tell you…tomorrow continue.
Now I’m in Lucien’s loft — alone — cold rainy afternoon —tossed & pitched all night long — Ah shit man I think I’ll just go to Mexcity and build me a topflight pad & relax in coolness, kicks, food, mistresses, main once-a-wee etc. heh? Get me an LP record player & great LP Charlie Christian album — Burroughs leaving Mexcity he says — I will dig Mex on lush this time and explore great Mexico. How awful it would be if I hadn’t writ this On the Road! — Got my next book ready to write HOLD YOUR HORN HIGH, jazz novel — won’t go to Europe till I can really spare $300 roundtrip tickets. Anyway my soul is hungup right now & I gotta make a move soon…
Please write me a letter.
Jack
From Selected Letters 1940-1956. Edited by Ann Charters. New York: Penguin Group, 1995.
FURTHER READING
Read an essay on Jan Kerouac, Kerouac’s daughter (who, as stated in above, he originally disowned).
Watch a short video on the original manuscript of On the Road at the British Library in 2012.
Learn about how On the Road was published in an essay by Kerouac’s agent.