Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (64 page)

Jean-Louis

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p.]

ca
. February 26, 1958

9 Rue Git Le Coeur Paris 6, France

 

Dear Jack:

Got letter from Peter, your notes—I wrote you awhile back to Fla [Florida]—so thought I had been waiting to hear from you since. Wrote Peter five pages the other day including two page Lion poem [“The Lion For Real”], and been writing letters, to Phil, LaVigne, Gary today,
Climax, Yugen
, etc. etc. have to write Lucien still. Well, just sitting here in Paris, in my room. Bill today and Gregory talking about sword swallowers and juvenile gangs in NY. I been moping and gloomy, write desultory, my bowl unlucid. Tho six hours staring at ceiling and reading a pack of Whalen manuscript wound up happy again. [ . . . ] You got your house yet, what's it like and where's it be—maybe near my brother's out in Plainview—Huntsville? That's near Whitman birthplace cottage too. Also near Peter's family. And
Dharma Bums
sold? You know we still haven't got a copy of
On the Road
here I haven't seen it tho received
Subterraneans
—can't you get Cowley or Lord to (airmail?) us a copy? It's not on sale here that I've seen. Herb Gold was here, as I wrote Peter, I was very paranoid about him. Bill thought too much so, but finally settled down he came by often, dug Bill, I read him County Clerk, explained what I could about your actual method of writing, perhaps he be more sympathetic. First nite I screamed at him but then cooled it. He's just another race or something. Depressing. How you taking NYC? I'm afraid to come back and face all them aroused evil forces for fear I'll close up and try making sense and then really sound horrible. About reading, I have record to make for Fantasy records, and have been to studio here twice and tried but I can't do it when I know it's for real, money, contract that I can't re-record it for five years, etc. I just daze over and can't read with any feeling and don't know what I do want to sound like and get self-conscious. But when I was in England I went to BBC studio got drunk a little with Parkinson and blew into Blake's secret soul weeping, tremendous recording—they played about seven minutes of it and it got great rave staid review in the
Listener
, demanded the rest. But I can't record or read under formal auspices, only accidentally. Like I find I can't write when I'm expected to write, something to cap
Howl
. It's bothered me all along. It's fortunate in a way, keeps me from getting to be a sort of pro—it also leaves me wild and free when I do uncork and blow—but couldn't read steadily by schedule, too shy or ambitious to really do well—so when I get back I'll give mad readings but accidental ones and won't be able to make any real loot on it—I think. I don't know. Anyway shouldn't come back for that. I'd like to give one classical drunk blowout in NY and disappear. I'll stay here four months more and be alone, more or less till I straighten out more, meanwhile want to dig Berlin, Warsaw and maybe short Moscow trip if can get invited, that's the only way I could go anyway. Money is ok Bill has some and City Lights owes royalties this month maybe 200 so I'm fine. Gregory is back from Venice, he wrote some great long poems there and sent them to Don Allen especially “Army Army Army” a great weird war cry about Nebuchadnezzar. Card from Gary, I wrote him today. What's up in NY? Is Lafcadio weirder like Peter says? How's Peter seem? Bill sends love. Saw few reviews yet of
Subterraneans
tho Peter writes it's already sold 12,000. How's
On Road
? You're right tho should get
Sax
out before they try to type you with Beat scene—it was in Pogo I saw, I guess you're permanently in History—Wow! I'll write Lucien in a day or so too, so will Bill.

Love

Allen

 

 

Jack Kerouac [New York, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France]

April 8, 1958

 

Dear Allen:

My mother didn't forward your letter from Fla in keeping with her feeling you're bad influence on me but please don't get bug'd but as of yore we will be friends in our own milieu. I've quieted down completely now after the other night stumbling helplessly drunk set upon by faggot ex-boxer and his two fairies who held me outside San Remo knocked me out twice and cut me with ring finger, Stanley Gould ran away also new poet Steve Tropp ran away more or less, in the Dorothy Kilgallen column it said I was “knifed” . . . went to hospital, taken by kind Lamantia and Joyce [Glassman] and Leroy MacLucas friend of LeRoi Jones, got fixt finally by good doc, gave me pills stop drinking, feel fine, a little bored but that's because in two days now I go driving south with photographer Robert Frank in his station wagon go get my mother, cats, typewriter etc. and bring back to new house in Northport L.I. where I am going to live very quiet secluded monastic life actually, announce to eager Northport author-lovers I am there to work and won't have no social life except when I come into NY to see Joyce, Lucien, Sterling, Peter, you, et al. House is old Victorian type with banister to slide down from bedrooms, and cellar, attic, etc., big yard with grape arbor and rock garden and PINES to meditate under in dark of night, everything will be fine I think after this nightmare beating-up . . . cause of fight I cannot tell, don't know, think Stanley Gould said something loud about “faggots” and they took for me. Your new G.J. hepcat sounds like repetition of same old horseshit, let's change, besides who could ever blow like Neal did at his peak, tell this G.J. he don't begin to realize how much Neal really did swing. Herbert Gold is a nowhere nothing as a writer, why don't he leave you and me alone, we have suffered in the Hell of Poetry, been busted, fucked up, lost, starved, ask him how much he's suffered for his dinky little craft. I have policy now of completely ignoring all Golds and suchlike they really dying for a rebuttal, like the other night a big discussion by Young Socialist's League called “The Kerouac Craze,” one of my spies reports that the chairman tried to put me down but a big funny sixty-five year old Russian leaped up and with Russian accent said my whore house scene in Mexico (in
Road
) spoke for itself and he kept yelling about revolution and everybody cheered, revolution of novel, etc. Trilling's friends also writing about me,
Subterraneans
has finally (because of obvious intellectual content) flushed out intellectuals of
Partisan
and
Kenyon
etc.
Dharma Bums
is sold, getting advance . . . coming out October, will be big number of Fall for Viking, you in it as Alvah Goldbook . . . they made me change your
Howl
(by Goldbook) to
Wail
. Yes the scene in NY aroused with evil forces but you can howl them down easy, don't worry. You can make much money if you want now, reading, and touring country, like [Jay] Landesman St. Louis,
¹³⁵
etc. New Orleans, etc. Lamantia ran away to Mexico today, he also was mugged and robbed of a buck and says the great purgation is coming in NY . . . all you gotta do is stay sober. I will never get drunk again now. Pills for five weeks then will power like Lucien. Lucien not drinking and feeling fine and being sweet beyond words . . . Can't you offer your BBC reading tape as an album for Fantasy? I made an album with Steve Allen, drunk, and three with Norman Granz, drunk, and they great, in fact so way out I wonder if they'll release them, sooner you come home the better, Rexroth opening in Five Spot
¹³⁶
next week at good pay, I don't go see him, he insult me in
Subterranean
review saying I don't know nothin about jazz and negroes, how silly, and him don't let negroes into his house even ever. Lafcadio is same, he said to me “You're gettin old, Jack” and told Peter “Don't be a poet”. Peter I never see but twice so far, he a great angel nurse far as I can see and handling everything well . . . he's shy of me I think.
Road
also still selling, two hundred a week, sometimes four hundred. What did it say in
Pogo
, I didn't see that? I got lead review in
New Yorker
for
Subs
, very snotty, by Donald Malcolm my dear, who doubts my virility . . . I will move into new house (
Life
mag assignment on trip down) furnish it, tape recorder and all, furniture, etc. and settle down quiet and write big tearbook about Lowell boyhood which will fit around
Sax
like halo. Only trip I really contemplate is this Fall to Gary [Snyder] for Dharma Bumming hike to Sierras and up Oregon way etc. and maybe not even that, I inward . . . France some day. I did TV show too, to question what is a Mainliner I sang “Skyliner” melody with words “Mainliner,” very Zen, even Giroux dug. Fuck it all, tho, this fame, these punches, I be lamb and people call me a vicious lion [ . . . ]

Jackiboo X

Is Bill coming back with you this summer?

I can't send
On the Road
without enormous hassle, you read it anyway once—tho I wish Bill and Gregory could see. People keep stealing my own copies. I'm sick of poetry and going back to “no-time-for-poetry” prose of old. But you and Greg and Lamantia are [?]

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., Northport, New York?]

9 Rue Git Le Coeur Paris 6, France
June 26, 1958

 

Dear Jack:

Wrote you last month, no answer, are you mad at me? Write honey, I'm full of snow right now, strange interesting rich acquaintances here, one a young Rothschild junior Burroughs, he and Bill will go to India someday together, I'll—somebody, another blonde young millionaire just brought up some old suits, Bill now smoking Green all drest in distinguished Averill Harriman black worsted flannel, thin, graying temples: he brought me my first suit in years, fine English grey wool, last a thousand winters—but later—Alas Alas Jack I got final word from LaVigne today, long letter, Neal is in jail, LaVigne not seen him, talked to Carolyn on phone to find out for me and wrote me—he's in San Bruno County jail, waiting trial, “Two facts are 1) that he was arrested selling to Narco agents, has been tied (mistakenly) into series of other arrests as source of supply (since he comes up in trains from south), there is a long list of charges against him (tho Carolyn didn't enumerate them), 2) that he is discovered as Dean M. of
On the Road
by the fuzz.” That's what LaVigne says Carolyn says, though I doubt the latter means anything, maybe just her paranoia. Tho I hear scene in SF is very bad, saw a girl from there who showed me evil Herb Caen column innuendos about marijuana smoke stronger than garlic these days on North Beach, anyone can pick up Columbus and Bway, fuzz is all over on account of all the publicity, city officials cracking down, The Place raided, and its balcony use forbidden and only thirty-five people at time allowed in LaVigne was having a show there and they ordered him off balcony—some guy name Paul Hansen fall off a building last Sunday, and finally skull struck again, Connie Sublette
¹³⁷
was strangled last “Tuesday AM by a spade seaman who confessed that PM.”—I met someone here two months ago that knew her said she had a codeine habit and was slightly crazy, calling cops to arrest people, I don't know what—long saga of drunken week following her around feuding with some evil tea heads or something, I don't know. Haven't heard anything of [Al] Sublette, I guess he's ok—in jail I had heard for a burglary. . . . everything I hear from there sounds evil . . . except letters from Gary [Snyder] who's in hospital for ball operation, and [John] Wieners who's living at the [Hotel] Wentley with LaVigne, they're friends now, I guess I think even making it . . . but what to do about Neal—I wanted to write Carolyn, don't any longer have address on Bancroft, got letter back—LaVigne forgot to send it—you have it? I'll try write him in jail. Carolyn added that she thought he'd get two to five years maybe—god knows what he's thinking. I had a shuddery premonition, thought he was committing suicide, yesterday when hi, suddenly thought of him maybe in jail, then got this letter today. But little doomed Connie is sad.

I'm coming back to New York in a few weeks, hope to leave here, have to get up the fare but that'll come, or else family said they'd send it if no other way. Gregory and I interviewed by Buchwald, Art, silly interview, he tried to be sympathetic but we were drunk and kookie, but next night I sent him big serious prophetic godly letter, said maybe he'd publish that, and Gregory will send him another Luciferian sweet one—but at end of article he said we were trying to raise fare, I was, for return, maybe someone send it. [ . . . ]

But is there anything we can do about Neal? Character witnesses—he'll be all alone only haggard Carolyn probably angry at him, Gary's in hospital can't find out anything, he's wise enough to know if anything to do, no one to write to there who could help—thought maybe Ruth Witt Diamant or Rexroth, just some letters that he's a writer or something, say—he being crucified, evil laws on T, trapped by decoy cops, all nothing for him to suffer for—and probably big mistaken spider web paranoias by cops—though I guess maybe he's having some peace and have plenty time to meditate and stay way from horses and RR and T and Carolyn and house and his life, forced vacation, maybe blessing in disguise and he grim and peaceful in jail, or writing prayers to Saturn, maybe he write again, die, I'll stay in NY-Paterson-Long Island Eugene's, wherever, a year, maybe Peter get Veterans apartment in Bronx—have endless notes, poems, to type, finish “Fall of America” poem, maybe, Bible Jeremiah book, China have billion people by 2000, we'll see it, be industrialized as much as England in fourteen years I read, must call for Holy America make it on beat angel soul promote Walt [Whitman] comrade to Budh ambassador—otherwise maybe paranoia machine sink down on us from new Asia—we may be visionary island America after all—still interested in
Democratic Vistas
, he says if we don't produce bards and spiritual America and if materialism greed takes over we be “the fabled damned among nations”—can see it happening from year and half in Europe, from Europe,—yes I see the vast virtues but family Sunday house with eternal TV like
T&C
[
The Town and the City
] solidity strength—even that and spume in history waves—white race too small—smooth metallic faced chinamen in space suits maybe go to Mars. Burroughs horrified by all tales of communist dullness, we hear here in Paris from travelers, shot all hop smokers in China etc. etc.—now T is banned (legally and slightly enforced) in Tangiers (Arabs have to hide their pipes under table in cafes now)—so America got to be peaceful wiseman among nations, and survive—maybe take vow of poverty and give away Empire State Building possessions to India. I dunno, just a gleam. [ . . . ] (Door just knocked, I got it locked so I can keep private 3 AM feed of coke and write you letter.) You ever get a coke letter before? Dear Jack, you love me still, I love you, don't be mad I make long remark last time and about mother—that why you no answer? [ . . . ]