On the Road. by KEROUAC, Jack - 1957

New York: The Viking Press, 1957. The copy of Kerouac's "Faust", the model for Sylvester Strauss in The Subterraneans First edition, first printing, association copy, with a contemporary gift inscription to American composer David Diamond, who featured in Kerouac's The Subterraneans (1958) as Sylvester Straus, on the front free endpaper, "Dear David - Merry Christmas, & have a wonderfully rewarding, rich New Year - love, Ed, Xmas, 1957".
Kerouac's first meeting with the "notorious gossip" David Diamond went well but the friendship soured when Diamond managed to insult Kerouac. "Beneath the phrasing of Diamond's 'insults', [Kerouac] heard a message that struck at what little sense of belonging he had recently acquired - the implication that a Canuck like Jack Kerouac could be welcomed into David Diamond's rarefied world of elegant and supposedly mature artists. Diamond had insulted his family, Jack felt, and even his God. Soon he was referring to Diamond as his 'Faust'" (Johnson, p. 6). Diamond's character in The Subterraneans bears the brunt of Kerouac's displeasure, "you remember when Sylvester Strauss that fag composer got sore at me because he'd read my novel and submitted it, yelled at me 'I know all about you and your awful reputation... you and that there Sam Vedder go around the Beach picking up sailors and giving them dope and he makes them only so he can bite, I've heard about you'" (The Subterraneans).
Kerouac's second book became the defining work of Beat literature and propelled the author from an obscure writer to "King of the Beats". Short sections of what would become On the Road appeared in several literary magazines, attracting early attention; even as a manuscript, the book garnered early cult fame. A film adaptation was first proposed in 1957 when Kerouac attempted to interest Marlon Brando in the project. This scheme was never realized. In 1980 the film rights were acquired by Francis Ford Coppola and the movie adaptation was finally released in 2012. Octavo. Original black cloth, spine and front cover lettered in white, top edge red. With dust jacket. A near-fine copy, spine ends bumped, offsetting to rear endpapers, in a nice example of the jacket, price-clipped, spine panel notably bright and unfaded, edges lightly rubbed and creased, spine ends chipped, otherwise fresh and sharp. Charters A2. Joyce Johnson, The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac, 2012. Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans, 2001.