Jack Kerouac letter, regarding "On the Road"
Maker
Jack Kerouac
(American, 1922 - 1969)
Subject
Edward D. White, Jr.
(American, 1925 - 2017)
Date1951
ClassificationsHistory
DescriptionA handwritten letter from Jack Kerouac, signed ("Jack”), to Ed White, April 20, 1951. Octavo, single leaf of torn yellow-lined paper, written in pencil. Together with an envelope addressed in type, postmarked New York, New York.An important letter, it records his current progress with On the Road, and Kerouac predicts “finishing it by this Sat. night April ? – I don’t know the date nor care and life is a bowl of pretty juicy cherries that I want one by one biting first with my cheery stain’d teeth.”
Kerouac is in high gear in this quick and exuberant missive: he is enthusiastic about seeing White in June calling the visit, “a coming event of first- rate superior importance,” and, happy to anticipate a rest from his labors, proposes that they “celebrate dull life and make the cherries dance the Kerry dance, which is the Kerouac-White dance of life, no Ellis – Right?” in a reference to Havelock Ellis’ book, The Dance of Life. He closes with the remark, “American women are making it awfully easy for American men in the city of N.Y. this Springtime.”
