KEROUAC, Jack (1922-1969). Typed letter signed (“Jack”) to Ed White, 2 October 1965. Unpublished.

Quarto. Single leaf; recto only. With envelope addressed in type, postmarked Saint Petersburg, Florida.

"Yes I went to Paris, came back all excited and wrote a novel about it.”

Kerouac begins, “Long time no write you, old buddy, and just this week tremendous draughts of nostalgia reading your old letters to me from Paris, Denver, Columbia campus.” Regarding his short novel about the trip to Paris, he reports that he submitted it to a publisher. “Rejected so far, although you can be sure everybody and his uncle up and down Madison Avenue is reading it and photostatting it. Some pieces of it have already appeared on afternoon TV soap operas.” Allan Temko later gave White a copy, and they would recount sharing tears of laughter over it, notably over Jack’s description of his own unmanaged behavior.

“I really miss my old friends more and more as I get older. I hope we shall always be friends,” he writes. “It would make you blush to see the fatherly advice you gave me in your prime, always specked with anecdotes.”