KEROUAC, JACK

KEROUAC, JACK

Two typed letters signed in pencil ("Jack"), 2 pages (11 x 8 1/2 in.; 279 x 216 mm), with approximately 30 words in pencil, Mexico City and Rocky Mount, North Carolina, [1952], to Rose Enoch Rotberg, Ozone Park, Queens; vertical and horizontal folds, some light staining. Typed envelope, signed on verso ("Jack Kerouac"), sent from William S. Burroughs' Mexico City address.

"I am now going under the name of Doctor Sax." Two fine letters written while Kerouac was at work on his novel Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three.

In 1952, Jack Kerouac went to Mexico City and stayed with William S. Burroughs in his apartment at Orizaba 210, which quickly became Mexico's Beat Central. From there he wrote to Rose Rotberg of Ozone Park, where his parents had moved the year before. "Here's hoping I can see you soon. I'll be in New York tomorrow night …look for me behind the bushes. But if I ever do get to NY just look for me to knock on your door in Ozone Park, beware … I'll have a slouch hat and a cape, you won't recognize my new green face, I am now going under the name Doctor Sax…no M. D.…" After a few words about his own family and Rotberg's, he writes of his life in Mexico, "As for me, at 11 o'clock every night I go off and walk 5 miles around the great Night City of Mexico…and eat delicious tortillas and tacos and everything, the works, so delicious, I only wish you were here with me tonight I reall[y] do…we'd have more fun than anybody…I hope we can have some fun together in New York or anyplace someday, our relationship deserves it…And so goodnight Rose…Rose of the Moonlight Trees…Adios." Under his penciled signature, Kerouac has typed "(don't know what would be better, tacos or you!!)"

Later that year, Kerouac went to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, to visit his sister Caroline. From there he wrote again to Rotberg, "Our hours together in NY were the sweetest for me in years and years—And it it hadn't been for you I certainly would have left NY completely unhappy…Believe me, I could never live in NY again…the sweet night air, the eternal verities of starry sky, eternal big dipper—the fire glow of tobacco curing barns at night—the sweet mornings, the birds, the roosters—the dew on the fence…nice simple goodnatured people…No more city for me as long as I live, I don't care how much they pay up there. Yes, I'm an old man at 30."

Two significant letters from 1952, a particularly productive year for Kerouac.