An 'Invaluable' letter that inspired 'On The Road' author Jack Kerouac has been found

[Triana]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — 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.

The letter, Kerouac said shortly before his death, would have transformed his counterculture muse Cassady into a towering literary figure, if only it hadn't been lost.

Turns out it wasn't, says Joe Maddalena, whose Southern California auction house Profiles in History is putting the letter up for sale Dec. 17. It was just misplaced, for 60-some years.

It's being offered as part of a collection that includes papers by E.E. 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.

THE REST:

http://www.businessinsider.com/letter-from-neal-cassidy-to-jack-kerouac-2014-11

[Cleita]

1. In my freshman year of college, "On The Road" was an iconic novel among

the young college men of that era, late fifties and early sixties, although the novel takes place a decade earlier. Although we ladies also read it, because it was the present fad in underground literature and arts, we weren't so enthralled by it. I liked the movie though that was made a few years ago. I'm surprised it didn't get a little more attention than it did because that era written about was actually the beginning of the whole counter culture movement that would peak in the sixties.

[KT2000]

2. how many young men hit the road

in the 60s and 70s because of that book. Lots! Lots of hitchhiking and moving around the country. Lots of memories banked during that time.