Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 740

That Kerouac “discovery”? –  That “very significant” unpublished two-page story by Jack Kerouac, (entitled “The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing”), described by its owners, the collection company YOM, (Your Own Museum)  as, “a quintessential lost chapter of the
On the Road saga”, miraculously discovered after languishing in the files of an assassinated Mafia crime boss, (Paul Castallano), for at least four decades (more?), surfacing last week,
(as was reported, first, exclusively, in the pages of The Guardian.)

from the YOM (Your Own Museum) description:

“This artifact is a signed, typewritten pamphlet containing an unpublished short story by Jack Kerouac, made in 1957. The item was created shortly after the publication of On the Road in September of 1957, as Kerouac soared to unexpected fame. As was his known practice during this fertile time, he would often produce unique, typewritten pamphlets and chapbooks – sometimes referred to as “brochures” by his circle – for friends, lovers, and patrons. These were not commercial publications but rather personal literary artifacts, gifts from the artist himself, typed by his own hand on his signature long-sheet roll paper and often bound simply.”

“The pamphlet is signed by Kerouac in his distinctive hand, utilizing his preferred green fountain pen—a well-documented idiosyncrasy of the author. The green ink is a hallmark of authenticity for Kerouac signatures from this specific period…”
Its authenticity? what do we think of it? well, not much, tho’ it’s certainly a great story.

Jerry Braunfield of YOM:
“We acquired it at the Paul Castellano estate sale in November 2024. It was during this season that his mansion in Long Island, New York was being listed for sale. Preceding the sale of the property, the beneficiaries organised a private auction of Castellano’s collection. The amount of time Castellano owned this piece is unknown, however it has never been seen on public records.”

A mystery item. Braunfield is now convinced of its authenticity.  We’re, frankly, not so sure.  In the age of increasingly AI?  knowing (or unknowing) parody? Kerouac or simply artfully crafted Kerouac-ian prose?  There are a number of red flags.

Our friend, David S Wills writes: ‘”I’m definitely no expert on this matter but I don’t believe it for a second….For me, it’s the use of (the word) “beatnik.” Why would Kerouac have written that word and how did he use it a full year before it was coined? That raises the possibility that he wrote it later and got the year wrong… or that somehow he came up with this word earlier and it was reinvented a year later… but still when you add together all the suspicious elements, I just don’t see how it could possibly be real. My theory – and it is purely a guess – is that someone wrote it in the 1960s or 1970s. It entered a private collection and is being sold with the sellers half-knowing it’s a fake. After all, if it were real it would have a price tag 10 times bigger.”

Asking price: $8,500.

To the piece itself: It  begins: “We hit Denver with the gas gauge kissing empty and the Hudson coughing dust from a thousand desert miles. It was that wild, holy, and crazy time when Dean and I were inseparable, two halves of a lost and found coin, and Marylou was with us, a sad-eyed angel in a too-tight sweater. The money was gone, spent on gas and cheap wine and a wild night in a Tucson motel that ended with a fistfight and a sprint to the car. Now we are broke, the sky was the colour of a dirty nickel, and a mean mountain wind cut down Larimer Street..”

and concludes:  “We drank until the wine was gone and the stars turned into one smeared light. We talked about everything and nothing, our words tumbling into the vast American night. We were together, on the road, broke and freehand for that one moment, on a nameless hill, under a billion stars, it was everything it was enough. Then Dean jumped up, “Okay! Now! Let’s go find Ray Johnson! He’ll be at the poolhall!  The night is young!” And the moment was gone, shattered by the next frantic impulse, and we piled back into the car, roaring towards the next thing, always the next thing, the holy, beat, and crazy next thing.”

Still on the subject of Jack Kerouac  – Ebs Burnough’s – Kerouac’s Road – The Beat of A Nation continues to get a profile, but not all hagiographic, enraptured, uncritical. Michael Collins makes some astute points in his piece for The Conversation – “This documentary can’t reconcile nostalgia  with the true contemporary US” –  “However much his fans might cling to this vision of the novel, Kerouac does not have the reputation now he did in the 1960s and 1970s. Waves of feminist criticism, ecological theory and a more cautious stance in literary culture toward the American political project have left him something of a fossil”.  The relevance of the Beats to the contemporary US.  Certainly the prophetic, as we have argued in the dystopias of William Burroughs, continue to resonate (almost uncannily) – and the prophetic and visionary of Allen, indeed of the whole Beat experiment. However…