There sat Kerouac's old literary agent, Sterling Lord, an éminence grise in tweed.

Sterling Lord, the literary agent in New York who is a friend of mine - he has been after me for years to write an autobiography.

"My agent at Sterling Lord has received three calls," he said.

In addition, her literary agent, Sterling Lord, resigned yesterday for reasons he declined to explain.

As Selby continued to write, his longtime friend Amiri Baraka, the playwright, encouraged him to contact Sterling Lord, then Kerouac's agent.

He began negotiations with the Putnam company to reissue Candy under his and Hoffenberg's real names, and he hired a new literary agent, Sterling Lord.

Brando never responded to the letter, and later on Warner Bros. offered $110,000 for the rights to Kerouac's book but his agent, Sterling Lord, declined it.

The contract, negotiated by Sterling Lord, Mr. Webb's literary agent, is actually a joint acquisition with Random House and one of its paperback imprints, Fawcett.

Sterling Lord, Stump's former agent, said Cobb and Stump split $6,000 from Doubleday.

The play lay dormant until it was rediscovered by Sterling Lord, Kerouac's longtime agent, who turned up a manuscript while working on his memoirs recently.