It exists! The long-lost letter from Neal Cassady that inspired Jack Kerouac to write On the Road will be auctioned next month at Christies, ending an 18-month-long battle over its ownership and another 60-year-long battle over its existence. As Kerouac said, “It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves.”
On the Auction Block
Tuesday New Release Day: Dos Passos; Wagner
Out this week: a new e-book edition of The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos and The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner.
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“Knowing Suarez is difficult”
Recommended Reading: Wright Thompson’s profile of Luis Suárez will make you want to drop everything you’re doing and travel to Uruguay and work as a sportswriter.
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Tom Bissell Turns Pop
How writer Tom Bissell has pulled up some literary roots (think The Father of All Things) to begin staking out territory in pop culture (Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter).
Sprechen?
Recently, a Czech linguist named Jakob Murian came up with an estimate of the number of languages your average European speaks. The study is complicated, however, by the question of how much you need to know to really understand a given language. At the LRB’s blog, Glen Newey asks: are you fluent when you can order a beer, or when you can translate Virgil? Pair with: Abigail Rasminsky on learning to speak German.