On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [21]
After “Jazz of the Beat Generation” was published Kerouac furiously tried to generate interest in his work and was frustrated not to hear any good news about the fate of his many manuscripts. By July 4 Kerouac was “about ready to jump off a bridge,” as he wrote to Cowley after the two had met in New York.
Cowley wrote to Kerouac on July 12 with the news that Peter Matthiessen had accepted Kerouac’s “The Mexican Girl” episode of On the Road for publication in The Paris Review. “The Mexican Girl” was later chosen by Martha Foley for The Best American Short Stories of 1956 anthology. Cowley told Kerouac that “On the Road is still being considered by Dodd, Mead. If it comes back from them Keith [Jennison, an editor at Viking] and I will take another crack at getting it accepted by Viking.” Cowley also offered to write a foreword to On the Road so that Viking might consider it more favorably. He told Kerouac that he had written to the National Institute of Arts and Letters asking if they could send Kerouac some money through the Writers’ and Artists’ Revolving Fund. Meanwhile, he said, “don’t get downhearted. Better times are coming.”
Cowley’s “warm and beautiful” letter “really made me feel good,” Kerouac told Sterling Lord on July 19. “I would rather have [On the Road] at Viking any day, because of the integrity of such a foreword.” He expressed his thanks to Cowley on the same day, telling him that “your letter made me feel good, and warm, and better than anything in years.” He “hopes Dodd, Mead hurries up and gets the manuscript back to you.” A foreword by Cowley would give the book “literary class and a literary kick in the ass…S’what I want, to be published by Viking.” He wrote that he would use his own name again, but “Sterling and I agreed on JACK Kerouac rather than JOHN which I think is more natural.” From Mexico in August Kerouac wrote Cowley “having just heard the good news” that he had received an award from the National Institute.
You have been very kind, have exhibited divinely-inspired gentleness…have kept quiet and tranquility in yr. heart and helped helpless angels.
Kerouac wrote to Cowley on September 11 saying, “I’m glad you got the Sal Paradise ms at last. You and Keith just gotta succeed.”
On September 16 Cowley replied with good news. Writing that he thought On the Road is “the right name for the book,” Cowley told Kerouac that the book was now “being very seriously considered” by Viking and that there was “quite a good chance that we will publish it.” Publication depended, wrote Cowley, on “three ifs”:
if we can figure out what the right changes will be (cuts and rearrangements); if we can be sure that the book won’t be suppressed for immorality; and if it won’t get us into libel suits.
In an undated in-house memo on the “libel aspects” Cowley restated his worries about the “principal difficulties” of obscenity and libel, but argued that many of the characters involved in the narrative “are not the sort who bring libel suits—in fact, many of them have read the manuscript and are rather proud to be described in it, or so I gather.” What worried Cowley more were the points where “respectable” characters enter the story. Denver D. Doll would have to be “changed beyond recognition.” Cowley did not believe that “Old Bull Balloon” (Burroughs) would sue: “the original of the figure comes from a fairly prominent family—courts of law are what he would like to stay at a very long distance from.” Cowley wanted a second