Typed Letter to Allen Ginsberg with Small Drawing

KEROUAC, Jack (1922–1969). Typed letter to Allen Ginsberg with small drawing, Martin City, CA, 26 August 1947. Two pages (275 x 210mm) on the reverse of two leaves of Marin County Housing Authority interoffice letterhead. Charters, Letters: 1940–1956 , pp. 119–23. “I speak as father to son.” “In what you’re trying to do is contained all that’s best in the world: it’s a wonderful life you’re weaving for yourself” Long, early Beat Generation letter, with commentary on Ginsberg’s poem “Last Stanzas in Denver”, words of encouragement, and a possible inspiration for On the Road ’s narrator; with autograph emendations and pencil drawing. In this “short, pithy letter” (of about 90 lines…), Kerouac writes to Ginsberg “as father to son” with words of encouragement for Ginsberg as a poet: “I can look at your strivings objectiviely and love them aesthetically and also emotionally. But I can see why you fail so miserably sometimes […] There are all kinds of things in your way with which you cannot cope, because you despise them: social things, psychic differences, etc. Don’t doubt yourself for one moment that Hal[don Chase] doesn’t understand you.” At the bottom of the second page, below his sign of “Adieu, adieu, goodnight, / J.”, Kerouac draws a “scene outside my window” showing a blustery landscape with a tree on the left, connected by an arrow to the last line of his post-script: “[…] powerful Octoberal winds and the joy of the earth itself.” This all comes after Kerouac moves stanza-by-stanza through Ginsberg’s poem “Last Stanzas in Denver”, adding a paragraph of notes after each. Under Ginsberg’s line “Sad paradise it is I imitate, / and fallen angels whose lost wings are sighs.”, Kerouac writes “Here you’re piqued at Denver and all the children of the rainbow everywhere, they are a ‘sad lot,’ you muse, really a sad lot.” Working presently as a script reader for Columbia Pictures, Kerouac takes an aside to mention “So far nothing fit for Hollywood and similar sadder paradises.” It is perhaps this moment, writing on sad paradises, that points Kerouac towards “Sal Paradise” as the name of his narrator for On the Road .

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