Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (69 page)

Jean

Jack

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]

December 16, 1958

 

Dear Allen (Dec. 16):

Just got “Midnight” from [Irving] Rosenthal, he doesn't like Jean-Louis so I decided once for all on “Old Angel Midnight.” I'd stayed up all night trying to find names in Bible and Dictionary, gave myself a headache, listed down such names as Lauschen M., Listen M., Lumen M., Luscious M., Labium M. TiJean M., Jean-Louis M., Jeshua M., Hezion M., Vision M., Grecian M., Goshen M., Nimshi M., Ziphion M., Nineveh M., Neriah M., Misham M., Mishma Midnight, Misham Midnight, Leshem, Shelah, Shelumiel, Shelomi, Sheshan, Elishua, Enosh, Ephean, Eliatha, Shimeon, Marcion, Halcyon, Elysean, Lover Midnight, Illusion Midnight, Notion M and finally couldn't sleep and watched Charley Van Doren on morning TV show where he suddenly begins telling Ling Giggling Ling tale by Mark Twain about an “old angel” in heaven and it was like the magic of his father and I took it. So I'm sending it tonight with these changes, using Lucifer Woidner at one point since he's an old angel of light they say. Rosie says he has the $600 for the publication so it's all set.

I'm sending you enclosed in this letter your story we writ at Lucien's farm, which has bit poems here and there for you, of yours, and I'm going to quote you a letter I just got from Henry Miller:

“Big Sur 12/9-58 Dear Jack Kerouac—I don't know where Ginsberg gets his mail, so you write him a postcard, will you, and thank him for his letter. Tell him that the review he wrote of your
D.B.
[
Dharma Bums
] in the
Village Voice
(N.Y.) struck me as quite, quite wonderful. . . . I felt, when I read
D.B.
that you must have written millions of words before—and I see, via A.G., that you have. Salute! P.S. Do you read French? I know, or hear, that you are French Canadian, but—? Anyway, if you do, I'd like to send you “Salut Pour Melville” by Jean Giono.” etc.

I'm putting down most everything, I've decided, except you and Dody and Peter in NY with a few exceptions, I really don't care if I ever see six million of those madcaps ever again. I'm really all up to here now. Have mad new great novel in mind I think I'll write after Christmas, beginning right after
Desolation Angels
in Arizona desert, to down to Mexico with Bill, you and Greg and Laff and Pete in Mex., pyramids, etc. floating gardens, etc. up to NY in that mad packed car, the Helens, WCWilliams, Yugo freighter, Tangier, Paris, Greg, (Bill), London, ship back, Florida, mad bus trip with my Ma to Berkeley, Whalen, back again to (after little North Beach anecdotes) Fla., back alone on bus to Mexico in time for earthquake, back to Fla., illness, then up to big “what you call October wave of beauty crashing over my head” publication of
Road
on up to nightclubs, readings, albums, interview, the whole mad scene in its entire nutty entirety (including Lucien weekends, Pat McManus,
¹⁴³
etc etc.) showing how it starts I'm a rucksack bum in the desert trudging along not knowing fortune is a crock in America. Think of a nice title for me. Fame in America? Trial on Earth. Through the Wringer. Love on Earth. (The weight of the world is love indeed). (O yes including the mad nun scene I made, etc.) A big epic book telling all the critics and reviewers how full of shit they are, right in their faces. Well, I'll write a book soon anyway, maybe get mad and just do
Memory Babe
childhood
Town City
reminiscences in real life non-fiction setting.

Meanwhile it looks like Viking okay for
Gerard
, and Allen (Don) wants
Sax
, and Jerry Wald interested in
Road
again he says. I'm being quiet and healthy and happy taking long walks in sub zero I mean freezing yard in cold moonlight and have color and clear eyes, don't drink at home, do my exercises and feel great. Eat big meals in kitchen and sneer at TV and say to people on TV “Oh ain't we smart!” which is my old original self okay. I mean, all this consanguine diamond sutra vow to be kind to every tom dick and harry and waste my energy and health. Kind to sportswriters and priests, kind to memo book salesmen and reel engineers. O yes, have a tape, just recording jazz now, later languij.

See you this weekend 19th and 20th and 21st.

Jean-Louis

Editors' Note:
In January 1959, Kerouac and Ginsberg performed in Robert Frank and Al Leslie's movie,
Pull My Daisy
. When Jack was in the city he tended to drink to excess and retreated more frequently to his mother's house for solitude. Ginsberg became more occupied with readings, interviews, and public appearances around the country. On March 26, Allen was scheduled to read at Harvard and had hoped that Jack would go with him, but Kerouac sent his regrets. In order to keep his sanity, Jack was trying to keep out of the limelight.

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to Allen Ginsberg,
Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky [New York, New York]

March 24, 1959

 

Dear Allen, Gregory, Peter:

It looks like I can't go to Harvard anyway because
Holiday
magazine wants those two articles by March 30th and it will take me several days to type them and also make bigger sentences out of our material. In other words I'm staying home to make your money for India and Crete. Besides, I'm tired. Hearing your Chicago records (tapes) made me feel depressed all over again about poetry readings. Too much repetition of same material for new audiences, etc. Too much the eagerness to be accepted. O well, you know how I feel and felt about that in Frisco.

Here's your check for 15 bucks I owe you. If I suddenly go mad and decide to go to Harvard with you anyway I will be at your pad at 3 or 4 on Thursday.

But then that would only be if I finisht and mailed off those two articles to
Holiday
by then. Almost impossible.

How you like my new typewriter type?

American College Dictionary sent me their big square definition of “beat generation” and wanted to know if I would revise, emend or make a new one. Theirs was awful, “certain members of the generation that came of age after World War II who affect detachment from moral and social forms and responsibilities, supposedly due to disillusionment. Coined by John Kerouac.”

So I sent in this: “
beat generation
, members of the generation that came of age after World War II-Korean War who join in a relaxation of social and sexual tensions and espouse anti-regimentation, mystic-disaffiliation and material-simplicity values, supposedly as a result of Cold War disillusionment. Coined by JK”

If I don't come to Harvard, read them this definition and tell them that I “plead work as my excuse for not attending the reading at Harvard, for every Massachusetts boy dreams of Harvard.”

My mother (not wanting me to go get plastered so often in NY, and me too I get sick and dirty and don't work) invites all three of you come out here any time you want, so after Harvard let's do our tapes etc. Also you can see my paintings etc. Also, Allen, I have copy of
Jabberwock
sent to you care of me, by big Scotland types, who want our work published there in fall, and other items.

Anyway, I'm not a liar. As to my recent belligerent drunkenness I just noticed today it all began last April right after that bum pounded my brain head with his big fingered fist ring . . . maybe I got brain damage, maybe once I was kind drunk, but now am brain-clogged drunk with the kindess valve clogged by injury.

More anon. Addio.

Jack

 

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., Northport, New York?]

City Lights
261 Columbus
S.F. Cal
May 12, 1952 [
sic
: 1959]

 

Dear Jack:

Fine, your check came a day after I delivered typewriter to Neal—cost exactly $50—a secondhand rebuilt portable—noiseless for tact's cell sake. No not paranoiac about kitchen yakkings tho if I shut up (as before) and didn't yell back I would wind up paranoiac. Just thought it was time to scream back and you were receptive. I wrote big two page letter to
NY Times
about
Dr. Sax
yesterday, said it was a “grand luminous poem” and maybe they'll publish it. I saw so far
NY Post, SRL
and
Times
. Any others? I mentioned Melville in letter. Sneaky queer article on me in
Partisan
by Diana Trilling. She thinks “Lion” is a faggy poem to Lionel. Ugh, Icky. Don Allen was here preparing a new SF issue [of
Evergreen Review
], and he mentioned he hoped to get more Brakeman on RR [“October in the Railroad Earth”] from you for it so it's a happy holy coincidence you sent it in when you did.

Yah, Yah, and Sterling Lord sent us big fat check for $450 last week. O how delightful, thank you very much, how noble that we all have that easy money thru your typings and friendlies. I also got some money from City Lights so I have $600 and will take slow trip home in drive-car-east for someone if can find car needs driving and see Death Valley and Grand Canyon, be home June mid-most. And Bill says he's coming to NYC late June or July—and Don Allen says he'll try arrange an advance for Bill thru Grove to cover round-trip boat-fare. Burroughs now in Paris fled from Tangiers—police after him there on suspicions, but nothing real so he's alright.

I'll try bring Phil Whalen up, east, with me, he's broke anyway now and has nothing to do here but get job which he doesn't want to.

Gregory wrote me nutty postcard after I sent him $40 saying Nicholson
¹⁴⁴
had given him 675$ is that true?

When you leave for Fla?? Bill probably come down there to see Willie [Burroughs's son] so you'll see him.

Giving reading here with all the poets, Wieners, McClure, Whalen, Duncan, etc etc. to raise loot for
Measure
mag. and also giving free reading at the Mission, and then I'm done with all reading for good for years.

Do you want the
Kaddish
for your Avon Book?
¹⁴⁵
Big Table
and
Yugen
have parts, and [Stephen] Spender asked me for it all for
Encounter
but probably can't since mags already have it. Let me know if you want it for Avon. How you coming? It must be a lot of heroic beer. Let me know whatever you want from me. Maybe the politics poem?

Don Allen has a lot of material he assembled from SF too. Duncan has a beard and looks like Whitman and rough and bearded and lives isolate on the coast and comes to town once a week to dentist and is much more vigorous than before, less pansy aesthetic, loudervoiced, grey hairs in beard—much better appearance. Just as stupid tho. And met [Brother] Antoninus who was always looking like ready to cry, and talks squeezing his hands in crotch in black suit bending head down low to the floor and whines. Strange pipple. Weather here just like Tangiers. Bright sky and bay. I saw Neal thrice in S.Q. [San Quentin], he's hung a little on his martyrdom doom of five-to-life for three sticks. and not people to organize pro-marijuana societies.

Love,

Allen

Gavin Arthur, teacher of Neal's S. Q. religion Saturday morning class is doing my horoscope. I read “Caw Caw” there and all the cons go around in cells now saying “Man then really wails—Caw Caw.” Next week I go down to Stanford to take LSD 25.
¹⁴⁶

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

May 19 '59

 

Dear Allen:

Please forward this to Neal, I don't know his “number” and also, when answering me, please, send me Neal's entire address. Read letter then seal. It's just a little note.—So much mail in my room I can't sit. Will you ask Ferlinghetti if 5,000 additional words of “Old Angel” enough? They are written and ready to mail, also the cover (ink and pastel, weird). But that goddam [Irving] Rosenthal has not gotten our release for Old Angel yet! And never paid me $50 token as promised! What IS Irving's ax address?

Glad about typewriter. Now Neal can work. And he will. I never saw
NY Post
review of
Sax
, musta been awful, but
Time
waxed good.
Time
likes to be put down, Dennis Murphy threw them off porch and they gave him swell review. Had we ever mailed that madletter to Lipscombe? Didn't see Diana Trilling's, heard much sick reaction everywhere even Wesleyan college where on whim went to accompany Gregory and had big fantastic time almost endless to describe. I danced with teenage girls in shorts, like a kid I was (they had shorts) . . . Wesleyan is run, I mean led, the boys are led, by two strange Russian jews with phony names (Charley Smith and the guy who wrote the introduction at the reading). I told them we would convert Moscow or something. I was a bit silly. Mason H. [Hoffenberg] drove us back in hotrod to Persia New Haven. I autographed twenty
Saxes
and
Roads
and
Subs
, etc. with all weird poems in them and drawings by Gwegowy. I banged piano. I wrestled wrestlers in the grass. Gregory went to a picnic with three hundred girls while I slept. We had to flee. The reading: G's “Bomb” reading made me weep (quietly), I read “Doc Benway” to roars of laughter, read just like Bill does. Also read last two pages of
Bums
. Got nice letter from Gary Snyderee. All's well. I leave for Fla. I don't know, six weeks or so, I guess, will see Bill in NY I guess. With Whalen also in town we better cool it, Gregory almost started race riot in Seven Arts when Negro slapped him, mad Italian rage, Lucien and Cessa were there. Our movie ([Robert] Frank) is best movie I seen. Germans buying it. Also TransLux chain I guess. But it's all too much and I'm afraid now, we gotta get out of NY. Arch Washington Square on Sundays crowded with thousands of beatniks. Thru which Gregory and I and Persian and Stanley Gould walk highdown billkick. Why don't you write a new poem about jet plane adventure for Avon anthology. Please tell McClure and McLaine that I rec'd manuscripts and that anthology people at Avon are slow. Write new poem for me, or anything you want. Antonius [Brother Antoninus] sounds great. Reading at SQ [San Quentin] a triumph of your prophetic soul, boy. You were prophetic right about
Sax
too,
Sax
instead of Mad Avenue Winking Wiking Pwess. Caw Caw. You're the hippest kid. If Irving Layton or whatever his name is, I mean Lawrence Lipton knew how hip it is to be hip like you . . . ah shit, that book is awful, all about his own barefooted bearded non-working art friends who don't write but just talk and show off and the things about us who started it all are pejorative.
Holy Barbarians
is the first full-scale attempt by the communist party to infiltrate the Beat Generation, and please tell everybody I said so, if you want. I don't want to have anything to do with no communists: tell them to leave my name out of it. And they even can get poor innocent pure jazz musicians in hot water: their awful hot water of hatred. You and I and Burroughs and Gregory and Peter believe in God and TELL THEM THAT, YELL IT! (Burroughs said so in
Word
.) (But why was it deleted from original manuscript of
Word
, which I have here)?—God is what everything is. Everything is a vision of God's mind which is No-Mind. When people are shitty it's because they don't know. don't know this. And God in his mercy gave me alcoholism instead of leprosy. Got big mad letter from Lamantia in Mehico. Also an enormous huge spread in Copenhagen Denmark paper with big pictures of me and [James] Dean and [Norman] Mailer and all about you inside and all in Danish. Saw John Holmes, okay, we went to opening of awful
Nervous Set
musical by Jay Landesman, music was good, story itself is middleclass play about lumpenproletariat beatniks. Condescension dripping from stage. The beatnik himself a silly fool. Jay was sad. But he will get his money back anyway, it'll run about six weeks. Why don't somebody produce my angelic play I wrote? Why don't Hollywood buy my angelic
Road
if they want beat movies? What's going on, Allen? It's not money I'm worried about any more, but the perversion of our teaching which began under the Brooklyn Bridge long ago? Gregory and I also crashed in on Jay Laughlin, and on Richard Wilbur, and I got Samuel Greenberg poems for anthology (from Mr. Laughlin). I haven't even had time to write my new column. I'm not going into NY any more, except when Bill gets here. I have a broken leg. All day yesterday I was wearing a hat that wasn't on my head (tell that to Creeley).