On Malcolm Cowley and Titles for on the Road

KEROUAC, Jack (1922-1969). Typed letter signed (“Sam Karooch Chrysostoph Screwm Scrabe Scrwal Jack xxx”), dated 6 August 1953 in autograph. Unpublished. Quarto. Two leaves of onion skin; rectos only. With envelope addressed in autograph only, postmarked New York, New York. "Ah Ed what a beautiful letter from you from the wide plains of night in Colorado [...] a Johnsonian magical wonderful letter, I am so glad we are buddies, I am so glad you think of writing me when you don't even know where I am." There had been a year lapse in White and Kerouac's correspondence before the letters pick up again in 1953. Jack’s reply is a landmark letter; he sketches in spontaneous prose gleaned from notepad scribbles and spun with total control through his old Underwood upright. He explains in part, “Here is an example of my trying to swirl my brain from commonplace expression into seas of English or English seas [...].” Among other things, he reports that “Malcolm Cowley still wanted wild novel of hitching, so I fixed it 50 percent better and gave to him. [...] we wont use On the Road [...] but will use Heroes of the Hip Generation – I spose Cassady will sue, let him sue.” On the topic of his personal life he enthuses, “I have love at last,” writing about Alene Lee (1931-1991), the basis for Mardoe in The Subterraneans . He describes her as “more intelligent than any woman I have ever known since Joan Adams.” She has had “the same force of idealistic pathos on my gullible loving senses that the history of life and soul of Allen, Hal Chase, Lucien and Sebastian had, in other words I really love her, not only as a ‘woman,’ but as a ‘man,’ in other words she is a complete humanbeing, so therefore I feel free and glad again.”

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