Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969
(edited by Ann Charters)

Review is written and copyright by Adrien Begrand.

Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969 is the much anticipated follow-up to the superb, revelatory first volume of letters by Kerouac (1940-1956) published four years ago, and like its companion, Volume Two is just as great a collection.

Volume One was an incredible trip, with Kerouac's correspondence as a guide, starting with his fanciful teenage days, to the seminal Beat years of the late 1940's, through the frenzied early 1950's that marked Kerouac's most prolific period, ending with a jaded Kerouac wondering if he'd ever get published, then suddenly getting an offer from Viking to publish On The Road. Anyone familiar with Kerouac's story knows that it's pretty much downhill from there, and Volume Two of the letters convey that in spades. It's a depressing last thirteen years of his life, but still fascinating, and thanks to the publication of his last letters, Kerouac's tragic fall is illustrated in more vivid detail than ever.

Early on in the book, as On The Road hit the press, Kerouac was as optimistic as he'd ever been, and was even more dogged in his efforts to get the rest of the massive amount of his material published. Not only that, but his new-found success convinced him to further insist that his work must be published exactly as he had written it, keeping editing to a bare minimum:

"Hemingway has nothing over me when it comes to persnickitiness about craft. Nor any poet. And why not?" (November, 1957)

As was the case during all of Kerouac's life, real life and Jack's dreams and visions of a sterling writing career were always totally different things. First came the overnight success, thanks to the infamous 'fluke' review by the New York Times' Gilbert Millstein, which made Kerouac both a sudden cultural icon and an enfant terrible in popular culture. That success was fleeting, and in no time at all Kerouac was the constant subject of scorn and derision at the hands of critics and scholars. His books continued to be published: The Subterraneans, Dharma Bums, Dr. Sax, Tristessa, Maggie Cassidy, Mexico City Blues, yet as every book came out the number hostile reviews seemed to grow in number, and Kerouac's confidence as a writer suffered a serious blow:

"I'm writing my new novel and I'm afraid because everybody's going to read every fucking word and I can't be myself anymore, I want to throw cocks and flowers at the reader and I hesitate..." (December, 1959)

It's obvious that, along with Kerouac's drop-off in production, his correspondence with his friends tailed off dramatically. The years 1957-58-59 cover half the book, while the latter half has ten years' worth of letters (of course, the letters were all chosen over countless others) to deal with. It was at this time when Kerouac started drinking more heavily than ever and his behavior became more and more erratic, which started to wear on his friends.

Jack's alcoholism came to a head in the summer of 1960, when he suffered a nervous breakdown at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in Bixby Canyon while staying there with all his Bay Area friends. This seemed to scare Kerouac enough to force him to get back to writing, and his first effort in several years, Big Sur, was also his best piece of writing in a long time. Published in 1961, it was met with the usual harsh reviews, but Jack appeared (or tried to appear) unfazed:

"IF THE CRITICS SAY MY BOOKS STINK THEY ARE ACTUALLY HELPING ME BECAUSE THEN I'M FREE TO WRITE WHAT I WANT." (October, 1961)

Of course, the bottle always won over Kerouac's will, and it wasn't long before his life started to spiral downward, so much so that by then Jack considered his alcoholism a normal part of his life: "Alcoholism is by all odds the only joyous disease, at least!" October, 1962)

One of Jack's most loyal friends during most of his life was Allen Ginsberg, and Jack's sudden falling-out with Allen is tragic to witness in the letters. From seemingly out of nowhere, an extremely paranoid Kerouac began to treat his beloved friend like garbage:

"I dont even particularly wanta see him with his pro-Castro bullshit and his long white robe Messiah shot..." (December, 1963)

One thing that both volumes of Kerouac's letters describes in great detail is Jack's rootlessness. Unlike the first volume, where he traveled constantly, his later years were spent in hiding at home with his mother, but Kerouac still could only stay in one place for a short period at a time. One startling passage describes what his mother had gone through, and much of the blame hung on Kerouac's head:

"Since I was born on Lupine road in 1922 Memere has moved & changed household furniture 26 times...Lupine, Burnaby, Beaulieu, Hildreth, Lilley, West, Sarah, Phebe, Aiken, Moody, Gershom, West Haven Conn., Crawford, then Brooklyn, Ozone Park, Denver, Colo., Richmond Hill upstairs, Kinston, N.C. [sic], Orlando Fla. (2 addresses), 1943 Berkeley way Berkeley Calif., Clouser St. Orlando Fla., Gilbert St. Northport, Orlando again, then Earl Avenue Northport, then Orlando again (here), and now we go to Northport again..." (December, 1962)

Kerouac and his mother (and eventually his wife, Stella) would end up moving four more times: to St. Petersburg Fla., Hyannis Mass., Lowell Mass., and finally back to St. Pete.

During Kerouac's last years it's most remarkable that despite the heavy drinking, his letter writing was still excellent, and he continued to correspond with people like Philip Whalen, John Clellon Holmes, and his agent Sterling Lord right to the very end.

This final volume of letters does go right to the very end, including the one letter that has caused the most controversy in the years following his death. The infamous Oct. 20, 1969 letter to Paul Blake, Jr., written purportedly immediately following a spat with Kerouac's brother-in-law, states Jack's intention to leave his entire estate to his sister's son after his mother's death. That letter has been argued in court and on the internet ad nauseum, so I'll leave it at that, but it was an interesting inclusion in the book considering the controversy swirling around its authenticity.

After reading the latest book of letters, one is left with unanswered questions such as: How could Ginsberg have been so patient with Kerouac acting so belligerently towards him? If Ferlinghetti was such a friend, why didn't he publish more of Kerouac's work? How could one man drink a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream in one sitting? How could Kerouac be so unkind to his only child? Why couldn't Viking publish the Kerouac canon when the poor man was alive, instead of raking in the dough decades after his death? Myriad questions arise, which is in part why Kerouac's life and times are so fascinating to readers.

Editor, and supreme scholar of All Things Beat, Anne Charters, has to be congratulated for assembling two utterly spectacular pieces of Kerouac scholarship. The two volumes of letters add so much insight to Kerouac's life that the public previously had no idea about, and no serious fan of Kerouac or the beat writers in general should be without these two books.

Selected Letters 1957-1969 is not a pretty sight: you're taken headlong into Kerouac's decline, and are left exposed to many of the flaws many Kerouac worshippers tend to gloss over. Kerouac was a literary genius, a naive, kindhearted person who only wanted to see his vast collection in book form on a shelf, but he was also deeply flawed, and at times very weak, letting his talent go to waste until his early death in 1969.

Learning about our literary heroes involves taking the very good with the very bad, like it or not, and Charters' work on this new book does just that, showing all sides of the greatest writer who ever lived, and still acknowledging his true genius.