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Kerouac Selected Letters #2
Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 2
The second in a two-volume life-in-letters offers an illuminating portrait of the latter years in the life of the acclaimed author, from his rise to fame with the publication of On the Road in 1957, through a period of growing alcoholism and disillusionment, to his death in 1969 at age forty-seven.
544 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
About the author
Jack Kerouac
401 books11.9k followersJean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.
Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 13, 2014
I'm a bit overwhelmed by this book right now to write a proper review so will mull over it on the weekend and do it proper justice next week.
In short, five (want to give six) stars for Jack's letters. One star docked because Charters' editing comments, while extremely interesting and helpful in some areas, were a bit over the top and sometimes annoying. For example, why does she need to quote things from the letters themselves just before we read them? I found this rather annoying. Secondly, some of her footnotes I think we could have done without. There were a few footnotes in which I found the 'link' between Jack's letter prose and her 'analysis' rather tenuous actually. More anon.
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In short, five (want to give six) stars for Jack's letters. One star docked because Charters' editing comments, while extremely interesting and helpful in some areas, were a bit over the top and sometimes annoying. For example, why does she need to quote things from the letters themselves just before we read them? I found this rather annoying. Secondly, some of her footnotes I think we could have done without. There were a few footnotes in which I found the 'link' between Jack's letter prose and her 'analysis' rather tenuous actually. More anon.
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January 2, 2009
Jack's letters after the time On The Road is published. Reading his letters you realize the extent of his drinking, the strange relationship he had with his mother, and other oddities.
September 30, 2026
I didn’t plan on reading this sprawling collection of letters but sometimes you walk into a new (secondhand) bookshop on your travels and come across something you just know in your gut to buy and that was the case here. At the time I had other books on the go and many more in the queue but nevertheless I dipped into it, figuring it’d be one of my “long reads” I could take my sweet time with, read other books in the meantime and just pick it up now and again or whenever I felt like it. And it went like that for a while. But soon enough, after I returned to Thailand from Canada late summer and having made it about a quarter way through this thick, nearly five-hundred page compilation of letters penned by Kerouac in the final years of his life, I found myself unable to put the book down. I have to also acknowledge the fact that, by the time we reach the mid-1960s here, the letters start to take on an especially desperate and depressing quality as Kerouac descended further into alcoholism and financial ruin amidst his declining literary career and general disillusionment with, well, just about everything, so that I really just wanted to power through the last remaining bleak years because to say it gets rough is an understatement.
This meticulously assembled collection of letters (Charters provides plenty of crucial editorial context and later on even figures into the context herself, having met Jack in 1966/7 to compile a bibliography) is invaluable for any Kerouac devotee or Beat enthusiast but might also be of interest to anyone who wants to observe intimately just how sudden “success” and the effects of fame, under certain circumstances and to a person of particularly sensitive and vulnerable disposition, could feel like a death sentence of some kind. And yet Kerouac’s situation really was more unique, or at least more nuanced, than the old cliched ‘help-I-can’t-handle-being-a-celebrity’ story. Catapulted into fame essentially overnight because of a novel he’d written years earlier as a young man and suddenly anointed figurehead of an infamous movement that didn’t really exist (indeed was never even a proper “movement” at all but the media is so dead-set on taking and making something concrete so as to be marketable therefore profitable), these letters show how Kerouac was never able to collect his bearings after the publication of On the Road. He became restless, and not in that old invigorating way of youth. The restlessness turned to weariness and cynicism, then to bitterness and paranoia, and finally he grew utterly despondent, all qualities I would describe as almost the opposite of Jack’s ethos pre-fame. “Fame” isn’t even an accurate descriptor here because it was the notoriety more than the attention itself that sunk his spirits. Jack became famous alright, but as these letters illuminate, he was never really respected or taken seriously as a writer during his lifetime, at least in critical and academic circles (and at worst some critics would attack him with damning personal insults, would eviscerate him as a human being, all but ignoring the actual books they were ostensibly writing about, autobiographical as they were). Essentially he was raked over the coals and dismissed as a hoodlum and it crushed him, making him long for the days when he wrote untethered and unknown and with pure undistracted heart.
It might be too easy to say ‘well who cares what critics/academia say anyway’ but it got to Jack because he took his craft very seriously and knew deep down that what he had was good and new (obviously time would vindicate the work). But back then it’s as if the media only honed in on the most juvenile qualities of his writing and decided that’s who and what he was, as if they equated him with Dean Moriarty himself (who of course was a romanticized depiction of Neal Cassady) and even then only saw the surface qualities of *him*. I suppose it all must’ve seemed very different at the time, viewed through a contemporary lens. When the 1960s rolled around and art began merging with politics on a greater scale, Kerouac just wanted nothing to do with it. It didn’t do him any favors and only alienated him further but in a way was very much in line with who Jack was, for better or worse. In a 1968 letter Kerouac wrote (among listing various other ills currently plaguing him): “the right is accusing me of ‘corrupting youth’ and the left is accusing me of ‘do-nothingism’”, highlighting the integration of art and politics and how Jack had (or wanted) no place in any of it. He never was a rabble rouser, didn’t seem to have strong convictions about political or social issues, wanted no skin in that game. In one particularly scathing review in Life magazine the Beats were dismissed as “social rebels first, poets only second” and it couldn’t be further from how Jack saw himself. Timothy Leary once put it very succinctly that Kerouac had “opened to the neural doors to the future but didn’t see his place in it.” This is simply who Jack was. The man just wanted to go live in a peaceful little cabin in the woods, drink and write books, with his closest friends occasionally dropping by to discuss art and the maybe state of the soul. This sense of naiveté proved unsustainable (if not delusional/impossible in the first place) in old age. Seriously, you could probably make a drinking game for every time Jack alludes to his ideal cabin retreat (you wouldn’t last very long). An even deadlier drinking game might be to take one every time Jack and his mother move across the country.
I could write a lot more on all this but question the value (of my time, of my words). I love Jack’s writing with all my heart, feel it on a personal level. Feel him too. I discovered his writing in my youth, as many a youth does, and came back to it as an adult (I don’t know how common that it is nor what it implies but why does everything have to IMPLY something - I like reading his words because they breathe and ooze Life, make me feel Alive and there’s some real melancholy there too of course but that’s all part of it). It is, however, really unfortunate and uncomfortable the stuff in here concerning his daughter Jan, whom he refused to ever acknowledge. The ugliest side of Jack comes out when he refers to daughter (whom he wouldn’t even mention without the use of quotation marks…it’s not a good look). Anyway. After reading these letters I also have a renewed appreciation for Philip Whalen and John Clellon Holmes. I especially loved this bit of writerly advice Jack gave Holmes in a June 1962 letter.
This meticulously assembled collection of letters (Charters provides plenty of crucial editorial context and later on even figures into the context herself, having met Jack in 1966/7 to compile a bibliography) is invaluable for any Kerouac devotee or Beat enthusiast but might also be of interest to anyone who wants to observe intimately just how sudden “success” and the effects of fame, under certain circumstances and to a person of particularly sensitive and vulnerable disposition, could feel like a death sentence of some kind. And yet Kerouac’s situation really was more unique, or at least more nuanced, than the old cliched ‘help-I-can’t-handle-being-a-celebrity’ story. Catapulted into fame essentially overnight because of a novel he’d written years earlier as a young man and suddenly anointed figurehead of an infamous movement that didn’t really exist (indeed was never even a proper “movement” at all but the media is so dead-set on taking and making something concrete so as to be marketable therefore profitable), these letters show how Kerouac was never able to collect his bearings after the publication of On the Road. He became restless, and not in that old invigorating way of youth. The restlessness turned to weariness and cynicism, then to bitterness and paranoia, and finally he grew utterly despondent, all qualities I would describe as almost the opposite of Jack’s ethos pre-fame. “Fame” isn’t even an accurate descriptor here because it was the notoriety more than the attention itself that sunk his spirits. Jack became famous alright, but as these letters illuminate, he was never really respected or taken seriously as a writer during his lifetime, at least in critical and academic circles (and at worst some critics would attack him with damning personal insults, would eviscerate him as a human being, all but ignoring the actual books they were ostensibly writing about, autobiographical as they were). Essentially he was raked over the coals and dismissed as a hoodlum and it crushed him, making him long for the days when he wrote untethered and unknown and with pure undistracted heart.
It might be too easy to say ‘well who cares what critics/academia say anyway’ but it got to Jack because he took his craft very seriously and knew deep down that what he had was good and new (obviously time would vindicate the work). But back then it’s as if the media only honed in on the most juvenile qualities of his writing and decided that’s who and what he was, as if they equated him with Dean Moriarty himself (who of course was a romanticized depiction of Neal Cassady) and even then only saw the surface qualities of *him*. I suppose it all must’ve seemed very different at the time, viewed through a contemporary lens. When the 1960s rolled around and art began merging with politics on a greater scale, Kerouac just wanted nothing to do with it. It didn’t do him any favors and only alienated him further but in a way was very much in line with who Jack was, for better or worse. In a 1968 letter Kerouac wrote (among listing various other ills currently plaguing him): “the right is accusing me of ‘corrupting youth’ and the left is accusing me of ‘do-nothingism’”, highlighting the integration of art and politics and how Jack had (or wanted) no place in any of it. He never was a rabble rouser, didn’t seem to have strong convictions about political or social issues, wanted no skin in that game. In one particularly scathing review in Life magazine the Beats were dismissed as “social rebels first, poets only second” and it couldn’t be further from how Jack saw himself. Timothy Leary once put it very succinctly that Kerouac had “opened to the neural doors to the future but didn’t see his place in it.” This is simply who Jack was. The man just wanted to go live in a peaceful little cabin in the woods, drink and write books, with his closest friends occasionally dropping by to discuss art and the maybe state of the soul. This sense of naiveté proved unsustainable (if not delusional/impossible in the first place) in old age. Seriously, you could probably make a drinking game for every time Jack alludes to his ideal cabin retreat (you wouldn’t last very long). An even deadlier drinking game might be to take one every time Jack and his mother move across the country.
I could write a lot more on all this but question the value (of my time, of my words). I love Jack’s writing with all my heart, feel it on a personal level. Feel him too. I discovered his writing in my youth, as many a youth does, and came back to it as an adult (I don’t know how common that it is nor what it implies but why does everything have to IMPLY something - I like reading his words because they breathe and ooze Life, make me feel Alive and there’s some real melancholy there too of course but that’s all part of it). It is, however, really unfortunate and uncomfortable the stuff in here concerning his daughter Jan, whom he refused to ever acknowledge. The ugliest side of Jack comes out when he refers to daughter (whom he wouldn’t even mention without the use of quotation marks…it’s not a good look). Anyway. After reading these letters I also have a renewed appreciation for Philip Whalen and John Clellon Holmes. I especially loved this bit of writerly advice Jack gave Holmes in a June 1962 letter.
“…Don’t revise so much, just tell what happened next…Do like I do, tell true stories and just change the names…Don’t be afraid to inject yourself as the author-Eye, and blast off with long talk about what happened and what you felt about it— Feeling is the essence of intellect, because without feeling nothing can be KNOWN, Goddamit!…So write how you FEEL. You have a heart as big as a house: open it to your typewriter: try lighting a candle just when you start a batting-out-session and blow it out just when you’re through! (there’s a lil magic to it)”
May 7, 2008
Only for the devoted, the descent of Ti Jean into paranoia and the bottle. Post OtR publication, Jack struggles with fame, lack of serious fortune, the changing attitudes of his friends, where Gabrielle wants to live next, and he struggles against alcoholism to complete Dr. Sax, Satori in Paris and Pic. Also dealing with the horror DT session of Big Sur.
But there are sardonically hilarious moments to be read between the letters, like the way Jack owed Allen $400 since pre OtR publication days, and despite the fact that Allen is starving to death in Paris at the beat hotel, it takes JK months/years to get the $ to him.
Another fun fact is that apparently there was to be a film version of OtR staring Brando that never ended up happening. All things considered, that's probably for the best-
An in depth look at a tragic figure, and the sadder half of his life, in his own words. But I guess we beat junkies really can't get enough of this stuff, and thus owe debts of gratitude to Ann C and the others who did the compilation work...
But there are sardonically hilarious moments to be read between the letters, like the way Jack owed Allen $400 since pre OtR publication days, and despite the fact that Allen is starving to death in Paris at the beat hotel, it takes JK months/years to get the $ to him.
Another fun fact is that apparently there was to be a film version of OtR staring Brando that never ended up happening. All things considered, that's probably for the best-
An in depth look at a tragic figure, and the sadder half of his life, in his own words. But I guess we beat junkies really can't get enough of this stuff, and thus owe debts of gratitude to Ann C and the others who did the compilation work...
Currently Reading
July 24, 2007These guys lived in some crazy times. The letters are amazing. I wish I could write to my friends like that and receive letters from my friends like that. Hint hint!
March 22, 2017
This can be a really repetitious book. It bugged me a bit, but mostly the repetition is fine. My distaste occurred for one or two reasons:
1) Latter-day Jack, though still with some beautiful thoughts & writing, is not the Jack we loved. He's a bitter alcoholic bitch, & I don't really feel he was being true to himself.
2) Towards the end, I was just reading the book too much - making the repetition & bitterness an extra hard pill to swallow. It gave me a headache. Though this second point is obviously my fault.
Otherwise, you know, it's great, it's Jack. Sometime later this year I'll probably read Memory Babe (the biography, not Jack's unfinished manuscript, which funnily enough I'll probably read in the next month also), but reading both volumes of his letters certainly gives quite a(n auto)biography itself.
Also, it's worth mentioning I wouldn't be surprised if I'm too petrified & lazy to type up the little sticky-noted sections in my copy of this book for a year or two. It's just too much. So many great ideas & insights in this book.
1) Latter-day Jack, though still with some beautiful thoughts & writing, is not the Jack we loved. He's a bitter alcoholic bitch, & I don't really feel he was being true to himself.
2) Towards the end, I was just reading the book too much - making the repetition & bitterness an extra hard pill to swallow. It gave me a headache. Though this second point is obviously my fault.
Otherwise, you know, it's great, it's Jack. Sometime later this year I'll probably read Memory Babe (the biography, not Jack's unfinished manuscript, which funnily enough I'll probably read in the next month also), but reading both volumes of his letters certainly gives quite a(n auto)biography itself.
Also, it's worth mentioning I wouldn't be surprised if I'm too petrified & lazy to type up the little sticky-noted sections in my copy of this book for a year or two. It's just too much. So many great ideas & insights in this book.
October 2, 2015
This one didn't engage me as much as the first set of letters did (pre-1957). This one being more about his struggling writing career and alcoholic desent, I was interest more in the first book that revealed his optimism in life, love of friends and plans for his future. I appreciate Ann Charters' commentary between letters. It helps put puzzle pieces together and give context.
June 5, 2017
Ends not with a bang, but a whimper. In my old hometown of St. Petersburg (while I lived there), he's beat up in a bar, weeks later starts internal bleeding and is dead the same day. How depressing.
The letters reveal the sometimes boring complexity of the life of an author, juggling erratic money flows and coming to the realization that the beat lifestyle might just be for youngsters.
The letters reveal the sometimes boring complexity of the life of an author, juggling erratic money flows and coming to the realization that the beat lifestyle might just be for youngsters.
February 18, 2008
Second Volume...also great!
December 20, 2017
Another excellent biographical portrait of Kerouac in letters. A tragic end to an under appreciated career.
June 13, 2024
These letters, written between 1957 (the year On The Road was published) and 1969 (the year of Kerouac's death at age forty-seven), these letters give a rather intimate glimpse into Kerouac's mercurial and decidedly alcoholic personality. Among the many themes and threads that run through this collection are his constant insecurity about money and about receiving appropriate accolades for his contribution to American literature, his suspicions and criticisms of those who were at one time his closest friends and allies and who would probably have remained such had he let them (I'm thinking here of Ginsburg, Snyder, and Burroughs), his close bond with his mother and their inability to find a place to live that suited them for more than a year or so, his unhappiness with the left turn taken by the "Beat movement" he spawned and its subsequent cultural heirs, his anti-Semitic paranoia, and the list could be expanded. The edition includes extensive annotations from the editor, primarily in the form of introductory notes to individual letters or sets of letters, and it is arranged chronologically. I found my sympathies moving steadily away from Kerouac and toward those who attempted to befriend and help this most difficult and self-destructive man, not the least of whom I would name Sterling Lord, Ti-Jean's long-time literary agent.
April 26, 2025
Excellent selection of letters that go from Jack's success with "on the road" to his death in 1969. Its funny how, despite all the books being sold, Jack never seemed to make much money. Also interesting - how much the NYC critics (and people like Capote) trashed his books, despite their obvious literary merits.
Jack got disrespected because he wasn't writing about "the right topics" and didn't know "the right people". He wasn't a leftist, and he didn't live in Manhattan. And he wasn't writing about things "the industry" cared about. The New Yorker never came calling.
Its hard to believe now, but in the 60s people believed what they read in the newspapers, and a small circle of critics (mostly in NYC) could make or break any book. As shown by the letters, Jack got a little bitter as he churned out good work only to have it shot down.
The alcoholism didn't help. Seems like every good American author, born before 1930, had to struggle with it. It killed some, cut others career short, and for some - it had no affect.
Jack got disrespected because he wasn't writing about "the right topics" and didn't know "the right people". He wasn't a leftist, and he didn't live in Manhattan. And he wasn't writing about things "the industry" cared about. The New Yorker never came calling.
Its hard to believe now, but in the 60s people believed what they read in the newspapers, and a small circle of critics (mostly in NYC) could make or break any book. As shown by the letters, Jack got a little bitter as he churned out good work only to have it shot down.
The alcoholism didn't help. Seems like every good American author, born before 1930, had to struggle with it. It killed some, cut others career short, and for some - it had no affect.
August 15, 2023
I can't really give this an honest star rating, as it is only Selected Letters of Jack Kerouac. However, I must say reading Kerouac's letters makes a young man like myself want to write! He has such a unique & fun style that really is, truly, KEROUAC. I also will say from the narrative perspective of this work Ann Charters is clearly an expert on JK and her added excerpts are critical for a complete understanding of the text... ok, back to the narrative perspective, these letters start right when On The Road is published and fame starts to hit Kerouac and you get to ride shotgun all the way through a writer's, beatnik's, dharma bum's, life as he continues to write, take harsh criticism, balance drinking and family (mainly his mother), and living basically paycheck to royalty-check. There is gold in here and I would definitely recommend it to any fan of the Beat Writers but also to any young aspiring writer, as you get to see the harsh reality of living of your work.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews