Raptis Rare Books was recently mentioned in the Times Literary Supplement with regard to a rare Jack Kerouac manuscript that we currently have in stock:
Where would we be without literary journals? There are the fancy ones, like Granta, n+1, the Dublin Review, all of which have their allure. But those we like most have a touch of the hand-made about them: the Gissing Journal, About Larkin (see NB, last week), the much-lamented Scottish Review of Books – when is Creative Scotland going to honour its name and restore its funding? – and the always welcome Beat Scene. No 97 has just arrived. If you can’t read enough about Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, then ninety-six back issues await you.
One of the many engaging things about Beat Scene is that the editor, Kevin Ring, and his assistant, Jim Burns, are apt to toss in documents and features from the archives without warning. In the new issue there is a letter from Diane di Prima to Ron Whitehead. Di Prima earns her place in Beat lore as a poet and publisher (she is also a “fat acceptance activist and teacher”), so the letter draws attention. Only after we’ve read it do we realize that it dates from 1995. With LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), she edited a Beat journal, The Floating Bear – and the new Beat Scene carries a half-page advertisement for the scripts of two plays by Jones, Dutchman and The Slave. Fantastic – only the ad appeared in 1964. A whole page is devoted to a letter to Mr Ring from the poet and Beat chronicler Tom Clark. It was posted in 2012. Clark died two years ago.
There is no shortage of original material. The new issue offers a Kerouac oddity, in the form of replies to a twelve-part questionnaire sent by a schoolboy in Boston in 1964, which have apparently remained unpublished until now. Students at a Boston high school were asked to contact their favourite writer with questions of their own devising. Robert Dodd chose Kerouac. The handwritten answers are currently up for sale as a Kerouac manuscript by Raptis Rare Books of Palm Beach, FL. Beat Scene prints the questions and answers in interview form. Here are a few.
Q. Many people have referred to you as a “beatnik” or a “way out” writer. Do you feel this way about yourself?
A. “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 of Bohemians and their politics and always had a job on the road on railroad, ships etc.
Q. Just what is your philosophy of life?
A. My philosophy now is “no- philosophy”, just “Things – As – They – Are”.
Q. What do you think is the ideal way of life?
A. Hermit in the woods, one-room cabin, wood stove, oil lamp, books, food, outhouse, no electricity, just creek or brook water, sleep, hiking …
Q. Do you like fame or would you rather write and have only your works become famous?
A. My name is like Crackerjacks, famous, but very few people buy my books because they’ve been told by newspapers and critics that I’m crazy, so I’m almost broke now 1964 – I hate fame without fortune, which is really INFAMY AND RIDICULE, in my case.
Q. Here in Boston there is much controversy over segregation of the negroes. What is your stand on the issue?
A. They need jobs, naturally, and education for better jobs – But the Irish and Italians of Massachusetts never paraded in protest, just worked harder, and made it.
The manuscript is signed “Sincerely, Jack Kerouac”. Having been framed and kept for over fifty years by Mr Dodds (or someone else), it is on sale at Raptis at $75,000. Beat Scene costs £8 per single issue.
