‘Greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America’ for auction

It’s been called the letter that launched a literary genre — 16,000 amphetamine-fueled, stream-of-consciousness words written by Neal Cassady to his friend Jack Kerouac in 1950.

Upon reading them, Kerouac scrapped a draft of On The Road and, during a three-week writing binge, revised his novel into a style similar to Cassady’s, one that would become known as Beat literature.