I thought I’d end my summer hiatus (lasting into fall) with this short piece of writing by Jack Kerouac, in which he tries his hand at Lax’s vertical style. This is a letter to his girlfriend at the time, Joyce Johnson (who, coincidentally, was one of my professors in graduate school at Columbia University 40 years later). The “Robert” Kerouac refers to is no doubt Lax himself. The letter was sent in January 1958, four months after the publication of On the Road, when the friendship between Kerouac and Lax was strongest.
Kerouac’s letter to Johnson is from p. 116 in the book Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-58 by Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson
I’ll be adding more new posts to this site in the days ahead.