Kerouac, Jack

Typescript fragment of a piece of detect🧸ive fiction from the juvenile Kerouac

4 pages (254 x 199 mm), with an illustration to p. 1 in blue pencil, the first letter “T” in red pencil; light toning, red adhesive s🎶ticker to illustration, two marginal chips to edges of p. 4.

[With:] Typed letter signed (“Jack K.”) to Mrs A.B. Chandler♐ in Lowell, Mass., 2 pages on one leaf (148 x 98mm), Richmond Hill, N.Y., April 12 1950, with the original stamped envelope; fold marks, light soiling to envelope. Thanking her for her letter, expressing an interest in seeing his “boyhood writings” when he visits Lowell next, reminiscing about Billy (his childhood friend, William Chandler), sharing that he is looking to move to Paris, with additio🦹nal manuscript postscript asking “Where are Bob & Jack? Tibet? Oshkosh?”. Housed in a folding chemise and slipcase.

Young Jack is inspired by the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

Jack Kerouac attended Lowell High School in Massachusetts until 1939, and this piece of juvenilia was written during his time there. His favorite boyhood reading in the 1930s was The Shadow, a pulp magazine that embodied the American obsession with detective stories. Here Kerouac writes the opening scenes of a noir fiction short story that follows Ken Harris of the Davis Agency of Crime Detection a🍸s he tries to take down mob boss Vince Perrelli. The accompanying sketch shows a rare attempt at illustration by the young Jack, with Ken sporting the typical detective’s fedora hat.

The accompanying letter was written by Kerouac shortly after the publication of The Town and the City and just before he went to Denver in May to publicize the novel. Mrs A.B. Chandler was the mother of his school friend Billy. Kerouac writes warmly, with rich nostalgia, of his time at Lowell, specifically mentioning episodes with Billy including "...our newspaper, our cartoons, our marble racehorses, pole-vaultiไng, boxing, sand-traps on the🐼 sandbank and then the time we haunted the Boston waterfront." Kerouac remained sentimental about his time at Lowell throughout his life.

REFERENCE:

Noꦡt in 💧Charters, presumably unpublished