Kerouac, Jack

Typed letter signed (“Jack” in pencil), to his girlfriend Lois Sorrells in New Y﷽ork City about Ferlinghetti, Cassady, and his nervous collapse in Big Sur

One page (195 x 215 mm), [Northport, New York, September 1960], signed with three penciled “Xes” (for kisses), single-spaced on a sheet of ta💯n paper, top and bottom edges show minor signs of having been cut (torn) from a larger sheet.

“Ferlinghetti was most wonderful to me."

Back home in Northport, Kerouac writes — in a frenetic style of mostly phrases and short sentences separated by dashes, probably stoked by burgundy — about his stay in California during the summer, which climaxed in an alcohol-fueled nervous collapse at Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s cabin in Bixby Canyon, Big Sur. After the breakdown, Ferlinghetti helped Kerouac recuperate at his home in San Francisco before sending him back East. A year later Kerouac based Big Sur on his experiences from this eventful summer in California. “... if you do come this weekend i will be glad to see you but no more port wine! No more booze! (just burgundy) — Ferlinghetti was most wonderful to me — I want to write new book now and will not have any visi🌠tors whatsoever (except you) for a month — quiet and mad and ready to write a new book, see ... I’ll have to say a lot of no’s from now on in my life if I’m to continue ‘working’ or writing ... I wanta make my home like a monastery, with Rev. Mother presiding, and not a hotel —You it’s different, you I need,— (some priest) ... had great time [in California], much to tell you about — even saw Sue and Joe Auerbach in a drunken blur — and to be frank with you, had a drunken love affair with Neal’s [Cassady] mistress, I say Neal’s mistress to identify her for you, actually she’s St. Carolyn by the Sea [Neal’s wife was also named Carolyn] — but so insane and drove me to nervous breakdown with her nervousness and the madness of her surroundings I had to leave ...”

“Read a beautiful story by Djuna Barnes out there ... Neal was great [Kerouac saw Cassady for the first time since the latter’s release from prison for drug dealing] — Ferling was great very very great ... The beach near the cabin was too steep and too thundrous to swim in — but I wrote sound of the sea in my notebook ... Had long talks with unbelievably handsome sensitive Mike McClure etc. — it was an enormous season ... when I heard Tyke [his cat at home in Northport] had died I almost died and had a nervous breakdown and went ma💞d for the first time in my life, thought I was being poisoned etc. etc. endless story ... Have evolved new diet, too — cheese and fruits, light bread, red wine, light style Hemingway eating — like Ferling showed me — Okay ...”

REFERENCE:

Not in Selected Letters, ed. A. Charters, and presumably unpublished

PROVENANCE:

L🥃ois Sorrells Beckwith (Sotheby Parke Bernet, 23 May 1979, part of lot 11, the Kerouac correspondence to Lois Sorrells Beckwith, purchased by the Boston bookseller William Young) — Unnamed consignor, but presuma🌜bly Young’s widow (Sotheby’s, 15 June 1990, lot 79, the same correspondence) — Maurice Neville (Sotheby’s New York, Part I, 13 April 2004, lot 132)