Long-lost letter that inspired Kerouac's On the Road to go up for auction

Posted on November 24, 2014 inUncategorized

Written by friend and muse Neal Cassady, the Joan Anderson Letter was believed lost after the poet Allen Ginsberg tried to get it published in 1968
American Beat writer Jack Kerouac leans closer to a radio to hear himself on a broadcast, 1959. Photograph: John Cohen/Getty Images

Source: The Guardian (USA) Associated Press in Los Angeles
Sunday 23 November 2014 12.03 EST

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.

Kerouac said shortly before his death that the letter would have transformed his counterculture muse Cassady into a towering literary figure, if only it hadn’t been lost. It turns out it wasn’t lost, says Joe Maddalena, whose southern California auction house Profiles in History is putting the letter up for sale on 17 December. It was just misplaced, for more than 60 years.

The letter is being offered as part of a collection that includes papers by ee Cummings, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Penn Warren and other prominent literary figures. But Maddalena believes the item bidders will want most is Cassady’s 18-page, single-spaced screed describing a drunken, sexually charged, sometimes comical visit to his hometown of Denver.

“It’s the seminal piece of literature of the Beat generation, and there are so many rumors and speculation of what happened to it,” Maddalena said.

Kerouac told The Paris Review in 1968 that poet Allen Ginsberg loaned the letter to a friend who lived on a houseboat in northern California. Kerouac believed the friend then dropped it overboard.

“It was my property, a letter to me, so Allen shouldn’t have been so careless with it, nor the guy on the houseboat,” he said.

As for the quality of the letter, Kerouac described it this way: “It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves.”

It turns out Ginsberg apparently was trying to get it published when he mailed the letter to Golden Goose Press in San Francisco. There it remained, unopened, until the small publishing house folded. When it did, its owner planned to throw the letter in the trash, along with every other unopened submission in his files.

That was when the operator of a small, independent music label who shared an office with publisher Richard Emerson came to the rescue. He took every manuscript, letter and receipt in the Golden Goose Archives home with him.

“My father didn’t know who Allen Ginsberg was, he didn’t know Cassady, he wasn’t part of the Beat scene, but he loved poetry,” said Los Angeles performance artist Jean Spinosa, who found the letter as she was cleaning out her late father’s house two years ago. “He didn’t understand how anyone would want to throw someone’s words out.”

Although she knew who Kerouac and Cassady were, Spinosa had never heard of the Joan Anderson Letter, the name Kerouac gave it for Cassady’s description of a woman with whom he had a brief romance.

“It’s invaluable,” historian and Kerouac biographer Dennis McNally said. “It inspired Kerouac greatly in the direction he wanted to travel, which was this spontaneous style of writing contained in a letter that had just boiled out of Neal Cassady’s brain.”

It was a style he would put to use in the novels On the Road and Visions of Cody, which featured Cassady, thinly disguised under the names Dean Moriarty and Cody Pomeroy, as their protagonists. He would continue to use it in such books as The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums and Lonesome Traveler, cementing his reputation as the father of the Beat generation.

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.

Meanwhile, about a third of the Joan Anderson Letter, copied by someone before it disappeared, became well-known to students of Kerouac.

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. He is reluctant to estimate what it might sell for. Although the original manuscript of On the Road fetched $2.4m in 2001, everyone knew that existed. It is much harder to estimate the value, he said, of something no one knew was still around.

For her part, Spinosa says, she is just happy her father rescued the letter from the trash. She is hoping whoever buys it will give the public a chance to see it.

“The letter is so good, and you see why these guys loved him,” she says of Cassady’s fellow Beats. “The writing, it just breathes off the page.”

Bibliographica 2014: Colin Steele presents talk on the future of books

Posted on November 22, 2014 inBook Collecting, Book News, Education

Thanks to Colin Steele for giving permission to reprint this article which first appeared in the Canberra Times (for which he is a frequent contributor). I found the article very interesting and hope you will enjoy it as well...

Youth matters: The digital age presents challenges for publishers.

The Japanese word, tsundoku, is a play on the words tsumu, to pile up and doku, to read. The composite word captures the almost tsunami of issues piling up for books and book collecting, which I'll be addressing in detail at Bibliographica 2014 at the National Library next week.

Can printed books survive the impact of current disruptive technologies, even though the sale of e-books is plateauing out in a number of countries? While tablet sales have now overtaken dedicated readers like Kindle, Amazon has recently introduced its Kindle Unlimited service which offers "unlimited access to over 600,000 titles and thousands of audiobooks on any device for just $9.99 a month".

Book versus Kindle: Is it merely a matter of work-life balance?

Kindle Unlimited is almost a return to the British historical circulating libraries like Mudie's, which had 7.5 million books in its inventory at the end of the 19th century. Boots, in the 20th century, advertised access to "the finest library service in the kingdom for less than the price of a newspaper". The commercial medium may change, but the message remains, even centuries apart.

The medium of reading has certainly changed. We apparently read more than ever before, three times as much as we did in 1980, but what sort of reading is it? Has instant communication gratification, by the dip-in dip-out generation, led to a reduction in our capacity for sustained attention and thus deep or slow reading? According to a recent Mintel study, about a third of Britons had not bought a book in the past year: 34 per cent said they had no interest in reading, while 20 per cent blamed a lack of spare time.

Hugh Mackay recently reported that over 50 per cent of Australians felt they could not live without their mobile phones, while recent Ofcom research revealed that the average UK adult now spends more time using media or communications than they do sleeping. Judy Wajcman in her recent book, Pressed For Time. The Acceleration Of Life In Digital Capitalism reflects that technological innovation is supposed to save time and energy, but in fact, people have never felt more pressured.

There is still the need, however, for human interaction in an increasingly digital age. Thus, more people than ever are attending literary festivals where you can hear and meet your favourite author. There are now 354 literary festivals each year in Britain alone. In Australia, literary festivals, from Brisbane to Perth, have seen record attendances and book sales in 2014.

While men are the main book collectors, women are the main book readers. Women are also the main attendees at literary festivals. In that context, it was good to hear Julia Gillard at the National Portrait Gallery on November 10 say that she had rediscovered "the joy of reading for pleasure". Gillard mentioned that her current reading favourite was Hilary Mantel, although she refrained from making any cross-reference to the current government and that of Henry VIII.

While literary festivals usually attract an older demographic, younger readers flock to Comic Cons, which record large sales of graphic novels and comics, often linked to TV or film adaptations. Autograph signings by actors from popular TV series and films feature as a major part of these conventions. Autographs are often expensive, but buyers know their autographs are genuine, which is often a problem with eBay sales.

My purchase of a signed Ray Bradbury book in the late 1970s from a major Australian book dealer, proved not to be genuine, when I later checked the signature with Bradbury. So caveat emptor is always the motto. Buyers should also be aware that prices of signed first editions fluctuate almost as much as shares on the sharemarket. Nonetheless, the seller of a signed unread mint copy of the first edition of Richard Flanagan's recent Booker prizewinner would surely have been overjoyed in selling it through the ABE website for $1500.

Amassing a large physical book collection doesn't necessarily entail spending a large amount of money, but you do need the space to house it. Flats lend themselves more to paperbacks and e-books. Barry Humphries, a long-time noted book collector, can clearly afford to accommodate 30,000 books in London, while Nick Cave has been cited as having 100,000 books in his Brighton house. Other notable celebrity collectors include Bryan Ferry and Keith Richards, who apparently once contemplated a career as a librarian.

If you don't have the time to seek out your favourite books in a particular subject, Philip Blackwell, a member of the famous Oxford bookselling family, offers the "Ultimate Library" service, with individual book collections customised for the home or hotel, as occurred with the Savoy Hotel in London.

Charles Stitz, in his excellent Australian Book Collectors volumes, documents numerous examples of collectors whose houses are overrun by books. Relatively few of these are seen, however, in The Canberra Times glossy Saturday magazine, Domain, which almost resembles "property porn" with its pictures of sumptuous house interiors. A famous New Yorker cartoon once showed a real estate agent telling prospective sellers to "lose the books", as they would depress the house value.

Stitz has illustrated the problems faced by book collectors as families downsize or enter retirement homes. I vividly remember visiting the late Professor Oskar Spate in a retirement village in Holt and his angst at only having the space for three to five books in his small room. Access to content would now be alleviated by e-books, but not their physical presence.

Second-hand book dealers and libraries are increasingly reluctant to take large general book collections. University and state libraries prefer to be offered focused specialist collections. But, that is only if they fit their collection profile, have space to house them and resources to process them – a big "if". Public libraries, other than the major state libraries, no longer generally hold large book collections and regularly "weed" collections.

Retirees and children are often the staples of public libraries, which seem to be morphing into social hubs, offering a range of community services beyond book collections. None seem, however, to have followed the example of Edith Cowan University Library in Perth, which has installed sleeping pods for readers to take "power naps". Will librarians, in due course, become bibliographic baristas, just as some bookshops have joined with coffee shops to survive?

Internet access and digitisation has assisted public libraries to combat, in part, the Kindle Unlimited challenge. The entire digital collection of the San Antonio public library system is now available from kiosks at the local airport. A digital bookshelf, "The Library Wall", was recently installed on a North London street to allow users to download non-copyright book titles into their mobile devices.

One segment of the book market that is booming, without even the necessity to read the content, is the high price limited signed edition, exemplified in the offerings of the German publisher Taschen. With the Rolling Stones in the country, why not buy one of its latest offerings, a limited Rolling Stones "Sumo-sized book", numbered and signed by them, with a foreword written by Bill Clinton. A snip at £3500?

Their offerings, however, have been topped by the Ferrari Opus Enzo Diamante. Encrusted with diamonds, signed by all living Ferrari Grand Prix drivers, it was marketed as the most exclusive book in the world when published in 2011. Only one copy was made available in each country at a price of £155,000. The Australian copy was apparently quickly snapped up after being displayed at the 2011 Grand Prix in Melbourne.

These books are far more than "tree flakes encased in dead cow", which is how one commentator has called the traditional printed book. Books will remain an effective information and entertainment source in a variety of forms, such as those accessed in the new Digital Public Library of America. The definition of a book may expand, but books and their content will remain "a fundamental channel of culture", as The Economist magazine recently reaffirmed.

Colin Steele, Emeritus Fellow at the ANU and long-time Canberra Times book reviewer, will give the keynote address at the Annual Conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand at the National Library on Thursday, November 27.

Colin Steele

Emeritus Fellow, Australian National University

Curriculum Vitae

M.A. (Liverpool University)
Grad.Dip.Lib. (University College London)
Emeritus Fellow 2004, The Australian National University
Director, Scholarly Information Strategies, ANU, 2002-2003
University Librarian, ANU, 1980-2002
Deputy University Librarian, ANU, 1976-1980
Assistant Librarian, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1967-76

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Bauman Gift Catalog is Now Available

Posted on November 21, 2014 inUncategorized

If you want a real treat, be sure to take a look at the 2014 Bauman Rare Books Gift Catalog. It is definitely something to see. Yes, the prices are high but the books are superb. It is well worth a look... Just:

Go Here

Source, The Sydney Morning Herald

Clever you if you bought The Narrow Road to the Deep North and asked Richard Flanagan to sign it on publication last year (and even better if you read it). The online rare book dealer AbeBooks sold a rare "unread", mint-condition, signed, Australian first-edition copy for $US1313 ($A1500) after his Man Booker Prize win last week - the company's best ever post-Booker price.

"Today a signed first edition of a Booker Prize-winning book is worth three figures as soon as the announcement is made," says Richard Davies at AbeBooks. "The phenomenon of signed copies selling like hot cakes in the immediate aftermath of a book prize announcement is a relatively new thing" - a product of online bookselling, he says and the Booker is the only prize with that effect.

AbeBooks has no sales record for True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey after it won the 2001 Booker, though a copy sold for $US475 this year. But signed copies of Life of Pi by Yann Martel sold online for $US250 immediately after its 2002 win and reached a top price of $US3,720 in 2008.

Davies says the only "highly collectible" Booker winner is Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie from 1981: an uncorrected proof sold for $US14,000 last year and signed first editions sell for about $US4000.

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Manchester’s bookworms may have difficulty reading John Rylands Library’s newest acquisition – as it now owns a copy of the world’s smallest book.

Measuring just 2.4 by 2.9mm, the tiny leather-bound text is said by library curators to be the smallest mechanically-printed book on the planet.

Unlike other miniscule manuscripts, this ABC-picture book was painstakingly crafted using conventional book-binding techniques – giving it a real spine, leather cover and 26 traditional paper pages.

Readers need tweezers to turn the tiny pages where they will see uniquely designed letters drawn by renowned German typographer Joshua Reichert.

The book, produced in Leipzig, Germany, in 2002, was created as a feat of printing expertise to commemorate the work of Jonannes Gutenberg who was widely credited for the invention of printing technology in Europe.

Much smaller printing presses than usual were used to craft 300 copies which were later sold for as little as £100.

It pips smaller ‘books’ – one fitting on the width of a human hair and another created using the same technology as money printers use to prevent forgery – because of its delicately traditional creation.

The Guinness World Records smallest reproduction of a printed book measures just 70 micrometres by 100 micrometres but was created using an ion beam on a pure crystalline silicon page rather than conventional ink on paper.

THE REAL DEAL: With 26 paper pages, a real spine and leather cover the text is officially the world’s smallest mechanically-printed book (© Cavendish Press)

Held in Manchester’s John Rylands Library in partnership with the University of Manchester, the book is kept safe from giant fingers in a box alongside other small books from their collection and has been part of the collection since 2012.

Julianne Simpson, Rare Book and Maps Manager at the library said that when it emerged there was a smaller book than their previous record-holder – a tiny edition of the Lord’s Prayer – they had to buy it.

“We love it as a library interested in printing and fine printing so it’s the sort of thing that is attractive to us,” she said.

“Some of the other really small books in the world aren’t what we would consider proper printing.

“This even has its own little leather binding. It’s made like a normal book. We have a small collection of small books and keep them all together in a box. We get them out occasionally but have to keep a very close eye on them.

“It’s a very quirky typeface and it’s printed in multiple colours which sets it apart from most others like this. It’s just showing off really!”

The John Rylands library has an astonishing collection of around half a million old and rare texts.

Ms Simpson added: “If you have good eyesight you can just about make the letters out. It’s probably not the right book to curl up with alongside the fire.