"Plan for Artistic Creation" for the Vanity of St Louis

KEROUAC, Jack (1922-1969). "Plans for Artistic Creation," c.1951. Single leaf, 280 x 215mm, carbon typescript, annotated in red ink "1951" with several words underlined (small pin holes at upper left corner). Stamped "PLEASE RETURN TO John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation." Custom cloth folder and clamshell box. "My project: writing and getting a third novel published. I expect to begin next Spring when my second novel On the Road is finished." In 1951, 30 year-old John Kerouac submitted this "Plan for Artistic Creation" in hopes of obtaining a Guggenheim fellowship to write his third novel, which was to be called "The Vanity of St Louis." It would be "about 'Canucks' living in the dense complicated French Canadian neighborhoods of New England milltowns, the special and complete experience of their lives in America." He goes on to outline is ambitious plan: to write a "series of connected novels revolving around a central plan that eventually will be my life work." He explains that " On the Road , the work I'm doing now . . . is in the third draft. On the Road is the first [novel in the series], as the French Canadian novel will be the second." He describes the series as a "structure of types of people and destinies belonging to this generation and referable to one another in one immense circle of acquaintances." He closes: "This will establish a disciplined system for my purpose, which is the expression of lifetimes of indefinable charm in the only way it can be done."

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