KEROUAC, Jack (1922-1969). Typed letter signed (“Jack”) 5 March [1950]. Unpublished.

Quarto. Single leaf; both sides; autograph emendations and postscript. With envelope addressed in type, postmarked Jamaica, New York.

"And it’s actually true that public sentiment will have something to do with my next book – which is half-finished in the raw because nothing is good that is not halfway between the ‘precious and the trashy’... the esoteric and the popular.”

An inimitable account of Jack’s hectic new life as a first-time published novelist, madly busy with errands and appointments with important new acquaintances, together with reflections on great works of literature and what it means to be a "great man." The letter also includes an account of the infamous prank Tom Livornese used to get Jack to his house for a fabulous weekend frolic: a telegram saying he had died in a crash. Jack lit candles in a Catholic church and rushed to Tom’s house for the expected wake.

Being published had brought changes to Jack’s reclusive life:

When I see you I’ll tell you tales about the mad business of bringing out a book – it’s worthy of a novel, a thesis. The clashing divergence of reviews, the roused emotions, the spitting, the true friendships established, the swirl of days, the too-much-drinking, the places where everything takes place. Where are my yesteryears when all I did was hurry up the street eagerly in search of a few simple pleasures, to relax off lonely work? Now I live like a tycoon of culture.

He reflects on publishing and public reception, writing, “If Crime & Punishment should appear on today’s publication date, a new novel by a young ex-Siberian convict, I’m positive that some critics would deplore Raskolnikov for being an insignificant ‘drifter of the underworld.’ There are complexities far beyond literature. Most of it is so sad. But we’ll talk at greater length.”

“I always wanted to be a ‘great man,’” he writes, years before the fame, notoriety and stresses brought by On the Road. He continues,

But since [childhood] I have learned that the really great man is someone like Wm. Blake, in whose time there was nothing heard from him, but silence. All the Carlyle heroes [...] were ‘men of silence and darkness.’ But in this age of noontime and noise (revolving doors, advertising agencies, blurbs, traffic, small talk) such men are not even wanted; and are laughed at. I like to think of Mark Twain as the one really great American mediator between silence and darkness [...]. I derive my life from the existence of a Twain and not from the existence of the psychological fact that he who wants to be a great man suffers from delusions of inferiority within. What difference does it make after a Huck Finn, a Journey to the End of the Night, a Song of Innocence is written? Those works are foremost; the ‘great man’ is but a victim of universal mortal limits, after all.

In his postscript, he harks back to previous conversations: “And as far as the ‘world’ is concerned, I didn’t care in the past and I don’t think I really do now. The ‘world’ […] is the place where men do not what they wish, or their hearts tell them, but what they think they ought to, and feel told to do. We used to discuss it, remember?, when talking of connections. And I used to say I didn’t need any. And I don’t.”