On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [22]
If it remains unclear when, precisely, Kerouac wrote the 347-page draft, Kerouac’s letter on September 11, 1955, may indicate that he had sent Cowley the new draft at this time, or that the manuscript was returned to Cowley from Dodd, Mead, and he had let Kerouac know. What is clear is that by then the 347-page draft of the novel was the one Cowley was reading. Justin W. Brierly, the Denver luminary who groomed promising young local boys for Columbia University and a figure Kerouac satirizes at length in the original version, is disguised as Beattie G. Davis in the 297-page draft. It is only in the 347-page draft that Kerouac calls him Denver D. Doll.
Agreeing with Cowley that the novel should be called On the Road and not Beat Generation, on September 20 Kerouac breezily outlined the steps he had already taken to avoid libel. These included making Denver D. Doll “an instructor at Denver Univ. instead of Denver High School.” He had changed “the name of the Mexican whorehouse city from Victoria to ‘Gregoria.’” He was on close terms with “‘Galatea Buckle’ who is only proud of being in a book.” Kerouac also told Cowley:
Any changes you want to make okay with me. Remember your idea in 1953 to dovetail trip No. 2 into Trip No. 3 making it one trip? I’m available to assist you in any re-arranging matters of course
Cowley did not think Kerouac was taking the issue of libel seriously. Writing on October 12 care of Allen Ginsberg’s address in Berkeley, where Kerouac was visiting, Cowley told him that the manuscript had been with the lawyer Viking had hired for two weeks. Cowley explained that because the novel was primarily a record of experiences,
[j]ust changing the names of the characters and changing a few of their physical characteristics aren’t enough to prevent a libel suit if the character can still be recognized by the details that we name…. I had better warn you again that this question of libel is serious…. The changes you mentioned in your letter aren’t nearly enough. You had better be thinking of some further changes that would keep (Doll) from bringing suit.
For characters like Moriarty, Cowley wrote, “the safest course might be to get the original of the character to sign a release.” Again, Cowley repeated that these were “serious difficulties.”
Two days later Kerouac fired back another optimistic letter. Reporting that Allen Ginsberg had “just made a sensation” reading “Howl” at the “Six Poets at the Six Gallery” event on October 7, Kerouac said that the problem of libel would be “easily solved.” He would “speedily” obtain libel releases and if this was not possible he would “make the appropriate requisite changes…There is no question that you’ll have all my cooperation.” Kerouac’s eventual response to Viking’s concerns about the possibility of Brierly’s bringing a libel suit is to cut from the 347-page manuscript the majority of scenes in which Denver D. Doll appears.
After seeing the publicity generated by the Six Gallery reading Viking was keen to get Kerouac’s novel into production. Tanny Whitehorn sent libel release forms to Helen Taylor at Viking on October 31. They were to be signed “by as many of John Kerouac’s friends who may have anything to do with ‘On the Road’ as he can possibly get.” Whitehorn delivered his report on the novel the following day.
Whitehorn’s 9-page report listed page-referenced instances in the 347-page manuscript where characters who had already been disguised by Kerouac might still be able to identify themselves and take exception to the way they had been portrayed. Next to the various names and page references on his copy of the report Kerouac has added handwritten notes indicating the course of action he had taken. Next to Denver D. Doll’s name Kerouac has written, “Doll removed except for most casual references.” “Out” is written next to many of Whitehorn’s notes. Whitehorn objects to a reference to “Jane walking around in a benzedrine hallucination.