Kerouac, Jack | Autograph letter signed to William Burroughs, alluding to his heroin addiction

Kerouac, Jack

Autograph letter signed ("J. Kerouac") to William Burroughs ("Bill"), an early letter alluding to his heroin addiction

One page (214 x 172 mm) on lined paper removed from a spiral notebook, Ozone Park, 2 September 1945; lightly toned, a few words lightly smudged.

"In temperance is wisdom; moderation is the key to all sound accomplishment."

By the summer of 1945, Burroughs' addiction was starting to get him in trouble with the law as he would later detail in his semi-autobiographical novel Junkie. He spent that summer back in St. Louis with his parents where, one presumes, it was harder to maintain his newly cemented heroin habit. Writing to Burroughs somewhat earnestly upon his return to New York, Kerouac relays his well-wishes for his fellow Beat: "Allow me to congratulate you on your speedy recovery and to express the heartfelt wish that in the future there will be fewer rocky bumps on the road of life for you. In temperance is wisdom; moderation is the key to all sound accomplishment. Let us hope that the whores of evil no longer loiter on the doorsteps of your path beckoning you into the brothel of despair, and that hereinafter you may present them with the most rigid manifestations of a firm and manly will. Ad astra per aspera."

REFERENCE:

Selected Letters: 1940-1956, ed. A. Charters, p. 93