Jack Kerouac Autograph Manuscript Signed.

KEROUAC, Jack.

$75,000.00

Item Number: 79098

Autograph manuscript signed, being Kerouac’s answers to twelve typed questions from Robert Dodd, two pages, quarto, 28 February 1964.

Kerouac candidly replies to a young man’s questions. Given a ninth-grade classroom assignment to contact his favorite writer, Robert Dodd chose Jack Kerouac. The author provides lengthy answers to the young Dodd’s questions. On the question of his changing writing style Kerouac explains: “The Town and the City was my first, young man novel when I was just starting our trying to write like Thomas Wolfe — Lonesome Traveler is a product of my own style which I developed in later years, spontaneous writing’ with no looking back, in my own laws of storytelling — OUTER SPACE PROSE! My own original invention.”

On the question of being classified as a “Beatnik” or a “way-out” writer, Kerouac responds: “‘Way-out’ yes, but I never was a Beatnik – it was the newspapers and critics who tagged that label on me — I never had a beard, never wore sandals, avoided the company bohemians and their politics, and always had a job on the road like in Lonesome T on railroads, ships, etc.”

On the question of his philosophy of life, Kerouac responds: “My philosophy now is ‘No Philosophy,’ just ‘Things-As-They-Are.’”

On the question of career goals. the author simply writes: “Be a great writer making everybody believe in Heaven.”

Answering the question of the ideal way of life, Kerouac responds: “Hermit in the woods…”, and his thoughts on fame: “My name is like Crackerjacks, famous, but very few people buy my books.”

On the subject of segregation, the author writes: “They need jobs, naturally,& education for better jobs — But the Irish + Italians of Massachusetts never paraded in protest, just worked hard and made it.”

Interestingly, Kerouac is most expansive in response to the final question: whether he has visited Montana. His answer fills three-quarters of the page, beginning: “Great day, my favorite state! – I wrote about Montana in “On the Road” but the publishers took it out behind my back – I stayed one night, up all night, in a saloon in Butte, to keep out of the 40- below February cold, among sheep ranchers playing poker (with sheep dogs at their feet), red-eyed drunken Indians drinking out of bottles in the john, Chinese gamblers, women, cowboys, miners – And outside of Butte, at Three Forks Montana, I saw the source of the Missouri River in the snowy valley – I also heard wolves howl in the Bitterroot Mountains – But I didn’t like Missoula much (skiers etc.) – I would like to have a summer cabin in Montana some day, the last truly ‘Western’ state.”

In near fine condition. Matted and framed. The entire piece measures 31 inches by 18 inches. A rare and intimate glimpse into the thought and literary progression of one of the formative writers of the 20th century.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, literary iconoclast Jack Kerouac is generally considered the father of the Beat movement, although he actively disliked such labels. Kerouac’s method was heavily influenced by the prolific explosion of jazz in 1960s America and later by his studies in Buddhism that originated with fellow beat and academic Gary Snyder. The raucous, exuberant, often wildly funny account of a journey through America and Mexico, Jack Kerouac's On the Road instantly defined a generation upon publication in 1957: it was, in the words of a New York Times reviewer, "the clearest and most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat.'" Written in the mode of ecstatic improvisation that Allen Ginsberg described as "spontaneous bop prosody," the novel remains electrifying in its thirst for experience and its defiant rebuke of American conformity. In his portrayal of the fervent relationship between the writer Sal Paradise and his outrageous, exasperating, and inimitable friend Dean Moriarty, Kerouac created one of the great friendships in American literature; and his rendering of the cities and highways and wildernesses that his characters restlessly explore are a hallucinatory travelogue of a nation he both mourns and celebrates.