Sterling Lord, the literary agent who worked for years to find a publisher for Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road,’ died Saturday in a nursing home in Ocala, Fla.
Sterling Lord, the uniquely enduring literary agent who worked for years to find a publisher for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and over the following decades arranged deals for everyone from true crime writer Joe McGinniss to the creators of the Berenstain Bears, has died. He had just turned 102.“He had a good death and died peacefully of old age,” she told The Associated Press.
His full roster of clients produced works about sports, politics, murder and the travails of illustrated animals. He represented former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Judge John Sirica of Watergate fame and worked often with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis during her time as an editor with Doubleday and Viking. Some of the great sports books of the 20th century, from “North Dallas Forty” to “Secretariat,” were written by his clients.
Johnson’s “The Vantage Point,” ultimately published in 1971, was dismissed by critics as bland and uninformative. Lord instead found a deal for “Quotations from Chairman LBJ,” a bestselling parody.Books and tennis were lifelong passions for Lord, born in Burlington, Iowa, in 1920. It began when his mother would read to him after dinner; he went on to edit his high school newspaper and work as a sports stringer around the same time for the Des Moines Register.
Lord had quick success by selling film rights to two popular sports books, Rocky Graziano’s “Somebody Up There Likes Me” and Jimmy Piersall’s “Fear Strikes Out.” But Lord’s “On the Road” quest would prove bumpier. By 1955, Kerouac was ready to give up – but Lord was not. The agent eventually sold excerpts to The Paris Review and the periodical New World Writing. An editor from Viking Press contacted Lord, offering an advance of $900. Lord held out for $1,000. In 1957, the book was released, The New York Times raved and “On the Road” soon entered the American canon.
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