Letters from a legend

Kerouac's college pal shares insightful dispatches by icon

Erika Gonzalez, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 26, 2007 at midnight

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The friendship between Jack Kerouac and native son Neal Cassady is the stuff of literary legend. The duo's reckless, rollicking adventures provided the basis for On The Road and gave rise to the beat generation.

While Cassady provided Kerouac with inspiration, another Denver buddy offered support. Retired Denver architect Ed White met Kerouac through a mutual friend at Columbia University and the pair quickly bonded over a love of jazz and literature.

When Kerouac made his first fateful trip to Denver, it was White (immortalized in On The Road as Tim Gray) who arranged an apartment for the young writer. And when Kerouac's first novel, The Town and the City, failed to garner big sales, White enticed Kerouac back to Denver for a book-signing at the Daniels & Fisher Tower, hoping it would help the author push more copies.

"A number of people turned out, but it still didn't sell that well," remembers White.

Still, White remained an important mainstay in Kerouac's life. Whether he was happily traipsing around Paris or lamenting health problems from a VA hospital in the Bronx, Kerouac often made time to write his college chum.

Those dispatches - sometimes scribbled on scraps of notebook paper, other times, carefully typed - are the subject of an upcoming book by White. He shared a few of those well-preserved documents with the Rocky Mountain News, along with his thoughts about his famous friend.

Sept. 1, 1951

White: "This was a very sad letter. I knew he had leg problems, but because he was an athlete (Kerouac initially attended Columbia on a football scholarship) I never thought about him in that way. He didn't give you the impression of someone who was sick. He was active and sturdy.

"And Columbia should never take any credit for helping Jack Kerouac. When he said he didn't want to play football, they withdrew his scholarship."

April 28, 1957:

White: "I remember I had a sketch pad with me I was using to make sketches of interesting details you see around the city and I remember I told him, 'You ought to do the same thing.' So, he began to carry a spiral notebook in his pocket. I always wondered how he could write in so much detail when he was out partying all the time and it was because he was writing notes as he went along.

"On The Road is almost biographical. Jack was really recording what happened to him."

In this first letter, a jubilant Kerouac informs White that he sold The Town and the City.

March 29, 1949

White: "I'd seen the book before it was published. That $1,000 was a real commitment. It was more money than anyone saw in a long time. Everything was new and wonderful to him (at that point)."

Jan. 28, 1950

"I think he was starting to pontificate about what he was feeling," said White of the contemplative Kerouac, who goes on later in the letter to ponder Molière. "It must have been difficult to be confronted with a typewriter and those blank rolls of paper."

April, 1951

White: "I just thought, 'That's incredible.' It sounded like he had nearly the whole book done. I imagine that he's had all this stress and he's finally got a break, so he sent off a quick note. I think he's just exuberant."

Jack Kerouac's On The Road Scroll Exhibit

• When and where: various times through March 31, Denver Public Library, Western History Art Gallery Level 5, 10 W. 14th Ave. Parkway.

• Cost: free

• Information: 720-865-1111 or denverlibrary.org

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