Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (52 page)

[ . . . ]

Besides I'm not having visions NOW. I wait for your arrival and will not resist then.

I saw Philip Lamantia, spent six hours allnite cafeteria talking with him at Kearney and Market after a party at Rexroth's and he told me how he made it with religious Indians in Mexico, met priest and had visions, illuminations, is now turned catholic, put down peyote, pot, lush and “am saving my seed” though married to a Gogo (name of girl) and is pushing Bibles at door fronts to the “laity.” He thinks he's now accepted back into Christ's and Mary's fold on lower and humble level, been saved from madness and sin, and expects to have more direct contact with the source. Christ “crashed” through time. He talked (looking like James Mason serious, nervous trembling fingers, calm voice, like Huncke's charming smile when smiling) all night and left me bugged with what happened to MY visions? Anyway he's really sold, reading church fathers, erudite, learned on kicks of theology now like Pippin used and Durgin used to be, though he (Lamantia) having had visions (real ones of monsters on peyote and off, since he was fourteen) and now this final one which obliterated all before, while reading Mohammed, he floated above his body, bliss, an angel appeared and told him he had to go back, he wept and said no, bliss here too much, angel beckoned him down and said he'd been shown the true light once and for all and then he woke weeping and “rushed out into the street to look at the heavens and saw the earth too bathed in an illumination” from X which lasted fifteen minutes or so. The only really wild mind around here, I also thought him slightly mad, saving his seed and talking about Marian theology now, intellectualizing his visions. He knows some booda [Buddha]. You should talk with him also, except that he's a narrow-minded catholic too, but you being an old catholic might be interested in seeing about the most interesting mystical catholic I met personally, he makes it as interesting as Peyote, I mean a hip catholic, how the disciples “all flipped out when they saw Christ resurrected,” not on nightclub level hiptalk application.

Peter's [Orlovsky] wandering around NYC now and from last letter can't find anyone home. He'll be here August late or September early.

[ . . . ]

Lovelovelove

Lovedog

Allen

Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

Sunday Aug 7—'55
212 Orizaba St.
Mexico DF, Mexico

 

Dear Allen:

Am down here with Bill Garver—got routed off my Western course hitch hiking across horrible Texas and came down for kicks—but still en route Frisco, will be there September—mainly I want a full penicillin treatment for my leg here, minus American doctor bills—as I get older leg is more persistent—Bill Garver and I found old friends of Bill B's and Bill G. is straight—I have no eyes for anything but occasional drinking, got sick first day on shit. Feel aimless, ephemeral, inconceivably sad, don't know where I'm going, or why. Wish I was in Frisco now but such a long trip. Will make it to Nogales on SP railroad of Mexico for $10—accompanied as far as Culiacan by Bill—dig—in about a month. Meanwhile I been sleeping on Bill's floor. Tomorrow I get rooftop adobe. All I want as far as life-plans are concerned from here on out, is compassionate, contented solitude—Bhikkuhood is so hard to make in the West—it will have to be some American streamlined Bhikkuhood, because so far all I've done is attract attention. Maybe we go to NY together at Xmas—My mother may be there again—I am sick with dysentery, write me a letter. Bill sends you his warmest regards.

Jack (Beat)

 

Message from Bill [Burroughs]: “I wrote you a letter a month ago and I thought you might answer it.” P.S. “For Krissakes don't fool around with O or H in California, worst state in the Union.” “Send him my regards.”—

Conscious continual compassion and ordinary contentedness for whatever way of making it,—I mean, simple kicks,—quiet—what more will we need? I meditate, rest my belly, pray, eat, sleep, masturbate and pace, till my time of now is up.

J.

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico]

before Aug. 15, 1955

 

Dear Jack:

Received your letter several days ago, then Peter Orlovsky blew into SF with kid brother, fifteen years old hungup on toilet rituals, and getting everybody settled.

Robert LaVigne the painter is somewhere near Mazatlan, if I get his address I'll send it to you, on your way up you can sleep on his floor and eat.

If you still have dysentery, you know the Enteroviaforma brownpill cure, if it persists I understand a heavy shot of antibiotics is good—Terramyacin, I believe.

I enclose first draft scribble notes of a poem I was writing, nearer in your style than anything. My book has fifty pages complete and another fifty to go still I think. It won't be finished by summer end. I will unless you persuade me that my sight saver lies elsewhere go to Berkeley, I found a cheap house ($35 per month) one room, a Shakespearean Arden cottage with brown shingles and flowers all about, big sweet garden, private, apricot tree, silence, a kitchen and bathroom too, windows on sunlight, near Shattuck (Key System trolley) Avenue, six blocks from school, perfect place to retreat be quiet, which is my desire since I am more absorbed in writing than before. I will have to go to work in compassionate hospital possibly to support self, and start MA work, course on Anglo Saxon they require and whatnot, not, and so will be alone there and so you will be welcome to settle there for one year, two years, a month, however long, there'll be all foods around, I eat well, little money, but enough to get into SF, we'll make out alright. I will be here at 1010 Montgomery Street for three more weeks or perhaps more, and move across bay around Sept. 5. Neal has apt in town for you to stay in if you want to flop over in city anytime. My original invitation to come stay here etc. still same except now the cottage with garden makes it more Shakespearean Bhikku retired, better.

An art gallery here asked me to arrange poetry reading program this fall [this was to become the famous Six Gallery reading], maybe you and I and Neal one night give a program; also we can record and broadcast whatever we want on Berkeley radio station KPFA.

I have been seeing big Berkeley professors but I am anonymous nobody and can impress no one with nothing so I will have to work for a year, after I can have money from schools and make it thru PhD's Fulbrights to Asia Harvards wherever I hope. I guess I have to do this route for the moment, otherwise just work anywhere when money runs out and not be preparing for anything as far as money future. What you think?

Letter from Bill, he wants me to go to South America bisexual tribes, but how can I? no gold.

Come up here keep me company, there's no one to talk to. I am continuing Surangama Sutra. Also I am reading surrealist poetry and Lorca, translating Catullus from Latin.

I will see [Karena] Shields the Mexico woman and tell her you'll leave your address at the U.S. embassy for her, she'll probably pass thru Mexico City in a week or two.

I was thinking, would you be able to order Mescaline Sulfate from the Delta Drug Co. thru Mexican pharmacy and bring it up here? I'll send check for that, find out? Delta Chemical Works, 23 West 60th Street, NY 23, NY, it costs $7.00 a small bottle.

I'll write soon. Write, come for sure.

Love

Allen

 

PS: apropos messages from Bill Garver??? I didn't receive letter from him in last two months. I exchange regularly with Burroughs. I tried some “aich”
¹¹¹
here but so expensive, a drag. Bring codeinettas up with you, a few tubes, yes? Regards to Garver.

Ed Woods, witness to Joan [Burroughs]'s death is here in town tending bar at The Place, main North Beach bar, and Sandy Jakobson, friend to Kells [Elvins], also in town on aforementioned radio station KPFA. [Chris] MacClaine is a cook-waiter at The Place also aforementioned.

I also want to get piano and study basic music, write blues poems.

Since Peter been away I've been writing a lot, solitude after all this year is good for me though I go blue depression mad in it too. I can't stand life.

Don't get mad at me, come when thou wilst, don't come only on account of Eugene's $25, but come anyway, soonest, make it in peaceful milk in Shakespearean house.

I am trying to shepherd fifteen year old [Lafcadio] Orlovsky around thru life right now, like being married and having overgrown problem child, crazy kicks, pathos of real life. They'll take an apartment in town here, I'll move to Berkeley and get away from it all.

Guy Wernham the translator of Lautréamont is in furnished room across street, comes over and translates Genet for me, Genet poetry, drinks tea and shudders dignified and lost like Bill, looks like a sort of Bill without Bill's genius charm.

I'm alright, actually sort of happy.

Also we'll have a car to loll in.

Love

Ginsberg

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

August
(not April)
19, 1955
c/o WM Garver
212 Orizaba St.
Mexico DF

 

Dear Allen:

Did you see Alan Harrington's review in
Time
magazine for Aug. 22-? Knopf has brought out his Saga, remember it? He seems to have compromised, by changing title from
An American Comedy
, to
Revelations of Dr. Modesto
. . . They make fun of it,
Time
and
Newsweek
, as they do of all current literature, as though the fact that it was current contemporary made it harmless.

Meanwhile, the geniuses of United Press keep turning it out pure. Lucien wrote: “I was going to sell your (seaman's) papers (that I left at his house) to an African shipjumper but he said they were no good” and Hudson writes: “Are you going all over that ancient quiet land, Mexico?”

Myself I have just knocked off 150 bloody poetic masterpieces in
Mexico City Blues
, each one of uniform length and writing. It's an easy world, hard to die in—

Garver sends his best.

I don't want to see the Senora—I won't move from Bill's pad. I am hungup and very high on Mexican. Does Robert LaVigne know Miss Green and all the other maids of honor? (Be sure to tell me).

I'll be in Frisco Sept. 15 or Oct. 1st—you be in Berkeley I find you. Peter sounds like the idea I had for Peter Martin in sequel to
Town and City
, with all brothers gone mad. I'm sure he's a saint and would never make fun—of him or of fifteen year old brother.

Your
Howl For Carl Solomon
is very powerful, but I don't want it arbitrarily negated by secondary emendations made in time's reconsidering backstep. I want your lingual spontaneity or nothing, that goes for you and Gregory Corso, I won't read hackled handicapped poetry manuscripts.

Send Robert LaVigne's address (I want to swim a few days in Mazatlan) and some spontaneous pure poetry, original manuscript of
Howl
, I'll be headed out sometime Sept. 1 or 15th.

Fuck Carl Solomon. He's a voyeur in the madhouse. He's all right. Give my love to Al Sublette and Neal. Tell Neal that I still love him dearly and shall always, he's my brother all right.

Garver is great guy misunderstood by Burroughs who didn't listen because of Viennese preoccupations. Garver knew a Jewish promoter who conned his analyst out of $25,000 after the initial fee. Don't give me that shit about Innisfree.

Will read your poem again,—bring suggestion, which is, the first spout is the only spout, the rest is time's tired faucet—etc.

Love to you too

Jack

 

P.S. [ . . . ] And—I like, in
Howl
, “with a vision of ultimate cunt and come”—and—“waving genitals and manuscripts” (which is like your prose about Peter hitchhiking Texas with
Illuminations
under arm)—and especially I like “died in Denver again” (leave my Dying Denvers) and “self-delivered truth's final l obotomy”.

Yes, I would agree with you that going to Univ. of Calif. for an M.A. or for anything is a good idea, it's your proper atmosphere, don't be afraid of becoming big college professor savant about literature and Buddhism and Oriental Art poet and critic like Cowley,
Allen Ginsberg.
Cowley and I walkin in the Village in June and Meyer Schapiro passes by, doesn't recognize me, or remember, but says, “Malcolm Cowley” and I say “Meyer Schapiro” on the street,—weird scene.

[ . . . ]

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico]

1010 Montgomery
August 25, 1955

 

Dear Jack:

[ . . . ]

The pages I sent you of
Howl
(right title)
¹¹²
are the first pages put down, as is. I recopied them and sent you the 100% original draft. There is no pre-existent version, I typed it up as I went along, that's why it's so messy. What I have here is all copies cleaned and extended. What you have is what you want.