Kerouac, Jack | On the Road; first edition, inscribed to Joyce Johnson

Kerouac, Jack

On the Road. New York: The Viking Press, 1957

8vo. Publisher's black cloth; lightly rubbed. Pictorial dust jacket; some minor edgewear. Housed in a black cloth slipcase with folding chemise. [Together with]: Jack Kerouac. Autograph letter signed ("Love Jack"), to Joyce Glassman [Johnson]; 1 page, London, 20 April 1957 on airmail stationery; folded and creased. [And:] Joyce Johnson. Minor Characters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983. 8vo. Publisher's cloth-backed boards, pictorial dust jacket; very good.

First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by Kerouac to his girlfriend, the writer Joyce Johnson, on the front free endpaper: "To Joyce with love from amigo beholden Jack" with a cartoon sketch of a smiling face; additionally inscribed by Joyce on the front pastedown: "Jack Kerouac gave this to me in September, 1957, when he came to New York for the publication of On the Road. Joyce Johnson."

Jack Kerouac wrote his groundbreaking novel, which defined the Beat Generation for the rest of America, in a 20-day marathon in April 1951 in a loft on West 20th Street in Manhattan. The novel, originally typed on a continuous scroll of Teletype paper, made the rounds of publishers for several years before it was accepted by Viking Press. Joyce Johnson (née Glassman) met Kerouac on the precipice of this success, and was romantically involved with him during the pivotal two-year period which saw the publication of both On the Road (1957) and Dharma Bums (1958).

Joyce Johnson's entrée to the Beat Movement came during her time at Barnard College through Donald Cook, her psychology professor, and onetime Columbia classmate of Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg. By graduation, she had grown friendly with Ginsberg and his circle. Johnson had sold her first book to Random House and was working at a literary agency when she met Jack Kerouac on a blind date arranged by Allen Ginsberg. In her memoir Minor Characters, she recalls Ginsberg handing her the telephone one day in early 1957, and hearing: “Hello. I’m Jack. Allen tells me you’re very nice. Would you like to come down to Howard Johnson’s on Eighth Street? I’ll be sitting at the counter” (Johnson, p. 126).

Following a stint in Tangiers with Burroughs, Kerouac rushed back to New York in April (see the letter included in this lot) and stayed with Johnson intermittently over the ensuing months. After an ill-fated trip to Mexico City in the summer of 1957, Kerouac wrote to Johnson on August 18^th asking for bus fare to New York City so he could be there for the publication of On the Road in September: “I already asked [Viking] if they needed any ‘personal appearances’ – I’d sure like to be in N.Y. when ROAD comes out! Unless you’d like to ship me $30 and I could take a bus & come stay with you a month.” He received the check within the week, and wrote again on August 23^rd with great anticipation for the trip: “…it made me so glad to see the check and hear about ‘our’ apartment … I’ll let you know app. when I’ll be in, just have a drink ready to pour, we’re gonna have a ball” (Charters, pp. 69-71).

Jack was staying with Joyce on September 5^th when The New York Times published its review hailing On the Road as an “authentic work of art” — they bought a copy of the paper at a newsstand on Broadway just before midnight and read it together at a bar. Johnson describes Kerouac’s reaction to the review: “After he'd read the whole thing, he said, It's good, isn't it? Yes, I said, It's very, very good ... We returned to the apartment to go back to sleep. Jack lay down obscure for the last time of his life. The ringing phone woke him up the next morning and he was famous” (Johnson, p. 185).

This lot is accompanied by an autograph letter from Kerouac to Johnson written from London on 20 April 1957 — "Dear Joyce, Arriving N.Y. Friday 26 or Sat 27th & will call you pronto—Are you and Ti Gris still open-doored for another tender week? Lots to tell you about Paris! Great city! But am determined to establish my new home now—Don't tell Lucien [Carr] or Helen Eliot I'm returning, I've given up getting drunk at last—(besides I'm embarrass't after all those farewell parties, with everyone except you). Love, Jack. See you mighty soon XXX" — It also includes a first edition of Minor Characters, with a lengthy inscription by Johnson on the front free endpaper: “3/23/94. I began this memoir in 1981, twenty-four years after my first meeting with Jack Kerouac, shortly before On the Road was published. I wanted to write not only about my relationship with him but about what it meant to grow up in the 1950's and to be a rebellious young woman attracted to Bohemianism. Minor Characters won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983.”

An important association copy of Kerouac's great post-war American novel; scarce inscribed.

REFERENCE:

Ann Charters. Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1957-1969. New York: Penguin Books, 2000; Joyce Johnson. Minor Characters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983

PROVENANCE:

Joyce Johnson (presentation inscription; note on front pastedown) — Roger Rechler (his sale, Christie's New York, 11 October 2002, lot 180, achieved $185,500)