Jack Kerouac -- 17 augustus 1948

TUESDAY AUG. 17 - Babe Ruth died yesterday, and I ask myself: "Where's the foundling's father hidden?** - Where is Babe Ruth's father?" Who was it who spawned this Bunyan? - what man, where, what thoughts did he have? Nobody knows. And this is an American mystery, the foundling becomes the king, and the foundling's father is hidden ... and there's greatness in America that this does always happen. - Called Barbara and she's giving the manuscript to MacMillan's, James Putnam, next Tuesday. Meanwhile I'll do the sea-chapter and the last chapter. - And all ye world's minor minds will make symbols of a man's words - ye minds, a pound of knowledge, not an ounce of wit, of sympathy, or human signification. What is the ball of red sun on the horizon? - say ye, the illusion of refraction and facts? ... I say, it is the verse of the soul's signification. Just thoughts - Did 10 pages of sea-chapter.

[** The search for Babe Ruth's father notion was later used, to great effect, in On the Road, the search for Dean Moriarty's (Neal Cassady's) father.]


Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was een Amerikaanse schrijver. Zijn 'Journals 1947-1954' zijn gepubliceerd als Windblown World.