Letter that inspired Kerouac finds a home
After a legal battle over its ownership and one failed auction attempt, a long-lost letter mailed from Beat legend Neal Cassady to author Jack Kerouac has been acquired by Emory University in Atlanta.
The 18-page single-spaced typed document was known as the “Joan Anderson Letter.” It was the inspiration for the spontaneous prose style Kerouac made famous in his masterpiece “On the Road” and was purchased at auction.
The sale to Emory was confirmed to The Chronicle by Jim Sampas, literary executor for the estate of Jack Kerouac. The price was $206,250, according to published reports — onetenth the price it was originally said to be worth.
“I’m glad this ordeal is finally over with,” Sampas said by phone from Holliston, Mass., near Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell. “The significance of this document cannot be overstated in that this is the letter that Jack credited with inspiring his new style of writing.”
The manuscript made its debut Sept. 28 in the exhibition “The Dream Machine: The Beat Generation and Counterculture, 1940-1975,” at the Robert Woodruff Library at Emory, according to a news release issued by the university.
The Joan Anderson Letter was a source of great intrigue among Beat disciples because it vanished not long after it was written and mailed to Kerouac in 1950. The manuscript detailed Cassady’s adventures including frolics with one Joan Anderson, which gave the document its name.
Kerouac later called it “the greatest piece of writing I ever
saw,” but this could not be independently verified because the letter went missing in transit from Kerouac to Allen Ginsberg, who was trying to find a publisher for it.
Some 60 years later, the document turned up in the effects of the late San Francisco record producer Jack Spinosa, and the fight for its possession began.
In December 2014, the letter made a brief appearance at the Beat Museum in North Beach on its way to being auctioned by Spinosa’s daughter Jean. Speculation was that the original typed draft could fetch a price in the vicinity of the $2.2 million paid for the original scroll manuscript of “On the Road.”
Right away both the Kerouac and Cassady heirs claimed ownership. The auction was halted and the document locked up until a judge decreed that it be sold and the proceeds divided.
But when offered by Christie’s in 2016, the letter failed to reach the minimum bid of $400,000 and was withdrawn. Offered in March by Heritage Auctions, it finally sold to the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library at Emory.
“We are very pleased that the Joan Anderson Letter is at a university,” said Jami Cassady, daughter of Neal. The Cassady family owns the contents of the 16,000-word manuscript. Cassady said there are publishers interested in bringing it to market, but these plans have been delayed by yet another legal challenge.
Also making its debut at the Emory exhibition is a typescript draft of the Kerouac novel “The Dharma Bums,” with editorial corrections from the publisher, Viking Press, and the author’s rebuttals to those corrections written in his own hand.
The collection also includes Kerouac’s final typewriter, his Army rucksack, and a paint box with his signature on the side. The exhibition will run through May 15, 2018, and is free and open to the public.