4 July (1955): Jack Kerouac to Malcolm Cowley

With intense self-pity, Jack Kerouac writes to literary critic and editor Malcolm Cowley, attempting to cheer himself up and secure the publication of the novel that would become On the Road. Desperate for money, likely suffering from phlebitis, and—unknown to him—on the brink of worldwide literary acclaim, Kerouac just wants a beer for the Fourth of July.

July 4, 1955
[Rocky Mount, N.C.]

Dear Mr. Cowley,

Here is GHOST OF THE SUSQUEHANNA and I hope the editor of Paris Review likes it and buys it because I need money, my two weeks in NY grew me a big bloodclot biggern a baseball on left ankle and I have to take expensive penicillin being stolen for me by friend nurses. When you said “Jack, why don’t you take a job for a while?” in the heat of our pleasurable drinks and dinners I forgot to tell you that there are mornings like this morning when I can’t walk at all, and I couldn’t hold down a steady job. That was why the court pronounced me Disabled. I really am Disabled (dont look it).

I hope you’ll soon have news for me about that American Academy of Arts & Letters loan you said you’d try to get for me. That would take me to Mexico, where penicillin is $1 a shot right in the druggist’s store and the altitude is good for thick blood.

Above all I of course hope and pray that you and Keith will take and publish Beat Generation at last and save me. Oh I hope we meet again soon under auspicious circumstances such as signing contracts.

It’s been too long. I’m about ready not only to stop writing but to jump off a bridge. The canoe is in the middle of the rapids and I dont even wanta row . . . when you cant even buy yourself a beer what’s on the other shore?

Nevertheless I hardly deserve yr. friendship and help—

I hope everything is well with you in your thoughts when you wake up in the middle of the night . . . Like Dimitri Karamazov’s “good dream”—

For I
Prophesy
That the night
Will be bright
With the gold
Of old
In the inn
Within. POME

Jack

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