KEROUAC, Jack [John].
The Town and the City.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company , 1950.
$2,600.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-149677
+$450
"Thanks for driving me home in your Buick in '32, and for your friendship to my father": First Edition of Jack Kerouac's First Book The Town and the City; signed by Lucien Carr, Carolyn Cassady, Kennett Love, and Helen Weaver
First edition of Jack Kerouac's first book. Octavo, original red cloth. Boldly signed by Lucien Carr, Carolyn Cassady, and Kennett Love on the front free endpaper, and by Helen Weaver on the title page. Lucien Carr, fictionalized in the novel as Kenneth Wood, played a central role in shaping the early Beat circle by introducing Jack Kerouac to Allen Ginsberg at Columbia University and reconnecting him with William S. Burroughs, a friend from Carr’s youth. Helen Weaver was Kerouac's girlfriend from 1956 to 1957, and was given the nickname "Slugger" by Carr after a scuffle between her and Kerouac at her apartment. Carolyn Cassady—Neal Cassady’s second wife—later recounted the formative period of Kerouac and Neal’s friendship in her memoir Off the Road, offering an intimate perspective on their intertwined lives. Kennett Love, born and raised in St. Louis, was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and was a student at Columbia University. Love was the original owner of this volume, and it was he who asked Helen Weaver to contact Lucien Carr to sign the book, among other Kerouac titles in his possession. Very good in a very good dust jacket. Ownership signatures on the verso of the dust jacket at the crown of the spine. Accompanied by an article regarding Kennett Love laid in. A truly unique copy of Kerouac's first book, signed by three figures who were a large part of Kerouac's life as he began his writing career.
Kerouac began writing The Town and the City in late 1945, according to Ellis Amburn, who edited Kerouac's last two novels and wrote the biography Subterranean Kerouac. Heavily influenced by Thomas Wolfe, he sent the completed manuscript to Wolfe's publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons, in 1948. Allen Ginsberg lobbied his former teacher at Columbia University (Kerouac had also attended Columbia), Mark Van Doren for help, and Van Doren set up an interview with Alfred Kazin, who worked as a scout for Harcourt Brace. Kerouac was unable to make the interview with Kazin but Ginsberg introduced Kerouac to New Yorker editor Ed Stringham, who arranged a meeting between Kerouac and the editor-in-chief of Viking Press. Kazin eventually decided to read the manuscript and if he liked it, he would pass it to the top publishers in New York. His contacts also included Houghton Mifflin, Alfred A. Knopf, Little Brown and Company, and Random House. Kazin recommended the book. In December 1948, Scribner's again rejected the manuscript, despite changes that Kerouac had made to the text. Little Brown also rejected the book that same month, declining publication due to its excessive length, which meant the book would be prohibitively expensive for a first novel. (Most of the costs of publishing a first novel are the costs of paper and binding, and a long book makes it harder for the publisher to recoup its costs.) After reading sample chapters of The Town and the City (along with Kerouac's work-in-progress Dr. Sax), Mark Van Doren recommended the novel to Robert Giroux at Harcourt Brace in March 1949. Giroux, like Van Doren and Kerouac, was associated with Columbia. Giroux was impressed with the 1,100-page-long manuscript, which he thought comparable to Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel in terms of its lyricism and poetry, and offered Kerouac a $1,000 advance against royalties. Publication eventually was pushed back to March 2, 1950. It received good notices from Charles Poore, reviewing the book for the daily New York Times, and John Brooks, reviewing it for the Sunday Times Book Review.
The Town and the City.
$2,600.00
In Stock
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