Neal cassady on the road5/11/2023 ![]() ![]() I thought it ranked among the best things ever written in America … almost as good as the unbelievably good Dostoevsky Jack Kerouac Cassady also told the San Francisco paper that her family, which owns copyright in the letter, will publish it at a later date. Now an “amicable settlement” has been reached, Jami Cassady told the San Francisco Chronicle, and Christie’s will auction the letter for an estimate of $400,000 (£273,000) to $600,000 (£410,000) on 16 June, following a preview tour moving from Seattle to New York between 31 May and 15 June. The letter was put up for auction in 2014, but the auction was cancelled after both Kerouac and Cassady’s estates claimed ownership. In fact, the letter was safe in the files of the Golden Goose Press, where it was discovered by Jean Spinosa in 2012, more than 60 years after it was written. He told the Paris Review that he lent it to Allen Ginsberg, who subsequently lent it to a friend that Kerouac believed had lost it over the side of his California houseboat. Kerouac called the letter “a whole short novel” that was “the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America”, superior to most of the acknowledged greats of US literature. Photograph: © Cathy Sylvia Cassady, Jami Cassady and John Cassady. ![]() Cassady’s letter to Kerouac, with additions, corrections and deletions in pencil and pen. ![]()
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