LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's been called the letter that launched a literary genre — 16,000 amphetamine-fueled, stream-of-consciousness words written by Neal Cassady to his friend Jack Kerouac in 1950. Upon reading them, Kerouac scrapped an early draft of "On The Road" and, during a three-week writing binge, revised his novel into a style similar to Cassady's, one that would become known as Beat literature. The letter, Kerouac said shortly before his death, would have transformed his counterculture muse Cassady into a towering literary figure, if only it hadn't been lost. When it did, its owner planned to throw the letter in the trash, along with every other unopened submission he still had in his files. Cassady would gain some small measure of fame as Kerouac's muse and, later, as the sidekick who drove novelist Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters bus across the country. When Spinosa discovered she had the whole thing, she took it to Maddalena, a prominent dealer in historical documents and pop-culture artifacts, to authenticate it.
Comment on AP Exclusive: Letter that inspired Kerouac found
By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle
Sun, 11/23/2014 - 9:36am
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