Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (82 page)

BOOK: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg
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Burford views about
and Carr comments about JK
Cassady reading of
changing title of
On the Road
to
classic sentence in
Duncan reading of
in “Jazz Excerpts,”
JK happiness while writing
JK readings from
JK views about
Laughlin reading of
publication of
reviews of
Rexroth views about
Village Vanguard reading of
and Williams
writing and typing of
Voices
magazine
Von Hartz, Ernest
VVV
magazine
“Wail” (JK)
Wake
magazine
Wake Up
(JK). See
Buddha Tells Us
Wald, Jerry
Wallace, Mike
Warren, Henry Clarke
Washington Blues
(JK)
Washington: JK in
Watts, Alan
WBAI radio station
Weaver, Helen
Weitzner, Richard
Welch, Lew
Wesleyan College: JK at
West End Bar (New York City)
Whalen, Philip
and AG in Alaska
AG comments about
AG letters to/from
AG reading work by
AG visit with
and AG writing style
and Ansen
and Avon anthology
and
Big Table
magazine
and
The Dharma Bums
Evergreen recordings of
and Ferlinghetti
finances of
and Giroux
happiness of
and
Howl
and Jarrell visit to San Francisco
and JK-AG letters
JK comments about
JK drawing of
JK letters to/from
and JK move to California
and JK in San Francisco
JK views about
and Levigue picture of Orlovsky
New York City trip of
and
On the Road
and poetry readings
publication of works by
and Snyder
and Wieners
and Williams
“What the Young French Writers Should Be Writing” (JK)
White, Ed
White Horse Bar (New York City)
White, Phil
Whitman, George
Whitman, Walt
whys and whats: G-K exchange about
Wieners, John
Wilbur, Richard
Williams, Jonathan
Williams, Sheila Boucher
and AG appearance
AG first meets
and AG interest in Buddhism
AG meeting with
and AG-Orlovsky relationship
AG relationship with
and Burroughs-AG relationship
and Cassady
and Cassady-AG relationship
and drugs
in jail
JK comments about
JK desire for
Moreland as similar to
in New York City
railroad ticket for
reactions to JK writings by
returns to San Francisco
and Snyder
and Sublette
Williams, William Carlos
and AG in Europe
and AG finances
and AG Guggenheim application
AG and JK visit
AG letters to/from
and AG in NMU
AG reading works of
AG relationship with
AG views about
AG visit with
and AG writings
Arts and Sciences grant for
City Lights publication of work by
Collected Essays
of
and Corso
death views of
at Horace Mann School
and JK-AG letters
JK comments about
JK letters to/from
JK meeting with
and JK writings
JK writings about
and Lamantia
Lowell letter to
and
Measure
magazine
mind views of
“Notes on the Short Story” by
Orlovsky comment by
Paterson
by
Patterson trip with AG of
and Pound
and Rexroth poetry readings
San Francisco trip of
Selected Essays
by
and Snyder
and Whalen
Wilson, Edmund
Wingate, John
Witt-Diamant, Ruth
Wolfe, Thomas
women
AG views about
Carr views about
at Ginsberg (Sheila) party
JK views about
and JK views of half-of-life-is death
in The Netherlands
picking up
See also specific person
Woods, Dick
world: as death
writing
AG views about
“bad,”
JK views about
theory of
Wyn, A. A.
See also
Ace Books
Wyse, Seymour
X concept, of AG
The Yage Letters
(AG and Burroughs)
Yeats, W. B.
yiddishe kopfe
(shrewd Yiddish foresight)
Yokley, Sara
Young, Bob
Young, Celine
Young, Lester
Young Socialists League
Yugen
magazine
Zen: JK writings about
“Zizi's Lament” (AG)
1
Edie Parker was Kerouac's girlfriend at the time.
2
Ginsberg frequently used pseudonyms to disguise the true identity of the people he was writing about. Here it seems probable that Louise was either Joan Vollmer Adams, with whom Edie and Jack were sharing an apartment, or Lucien Carr, who was in jail. Adams later became the common-law wife of William Burroughs.
3
Celine Young was Lucien Carr's girlfriend at the time.
4
Lucien Carr spent the next two years in prison.
5
Allen Ginsberg had gone to college originally to become a labor lawyer.
6
The “new vision” was a term that Kerouac and Ginsberg's small group of friends in Morningside Heights used to describe their own philosophy, which they hoped to express through their art. They picked up many of their ideas from Baudelaire's notion of “poet as alchemist,” the Symbolists' attitude of spiritual defiance, and Apollinaire's
l'esprit nouveau,
which pitted “experimental” arts against growing social conformity.
7
Alfred Adler was a Viennese psychologist who split away from Freud's methods during the early part of the twentieth century.
8
Lionel Trilling, an author and literary critic, was one of Ginsberg's professors at Columbia.
9
That summer Kerouac had been hired to work at a summer camp, before finding a job closer to home as a soda jerk.
10
A reference to the Carr-Kammerer murder, which had taken place one year earlier, on the night of August 13-14, 1944.
11
PM
was a socialist newspaper published in New York.
12
Both were fellow Columbia College students.
13
Prince Myshkin is the central character in
The Idiot
, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
7
Raskolnikov and Sonia are characters in
Crime and Punishment
, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
14
Ginsberg included two poems here that can be found reprinted as “The Poet: I” and “The Poet: II” in his
The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice
(DaCapo, 2006).
15
Mark Van Doren was a Columbia professor of English at the time to whom Ginsberg had shown his poem cycles
The Denver Doldrums
and
Dakar Doldrums.
16
Justin Brierly was a Columbia alumnus from Denver who had recommended that both Hal Chase and Neal Cassady attend Columbia.
17
Kerouac is referring to a Ginsberg letter of mid-April 1948, which is not included in this volume.
18
Barbara Hale was Lucien Carr's girlfriend at the time.
19
Ed White was a fellow Columbia student from Denver and an acquaintance of Neal Cassady.
6
Russell Durgin was the student in whose apartment Ginsberg was living at the time.
20
Saranac Lake, New York, in the Adirondack mountains, was the home of a famous tuberculosis sanatorium.
21
Allan Temko was a Columbia classmate of Ginsberg and Kerouac. One of their Denver friends, he later became an architectural critic in San Francisco, and won a Pulitzer prize.
22
Ginsberg was working for the journal of the Academy of Political Science.
23
A reference to Oswald Spengler's
Decline of the West.
24
Tom Livornese was a student friend of Kerouac who knew Vicki Russell and Little Jack Melody. He was also a part-time jazz pianist.
25
Lennie Tristano was a jazz pianist and composer.
26
Lucien Carr had spent two years in an Elmira prison in upstate New York after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the death of David Kammerer.
27
Jinny Baker was a young girlfriend of Kerouac's who appears as Jinny Jones in
On the Road.
28
Victor Tejeira is described as Victor Villanueva in
On the Road.
29
Earlier that year Seymour Lawrence, editor of the Harvard literary magazine
Wake,
had turned down “The Death of George Martin,” a section of
The Town and the City.
30
David Diamond was a New York composer who appeared in Kerouac's
The Subterraneans
as Sylvester Strauss.
31
Julien Sorel is the protagonist in Stendhal's novel
The Red and the Black.
32
Carolyn Cassady had rented a house in San Francisco at 160 Alpine Terrace the previous summer while she was pregnant.
33
Adele Morales was a girlfriend of Kerouac, and later married Norman Mailer.
34
Richard Weitzner was a friend and fellow Columbia student.
35
Joe May was a gay friend of Ginsberg's.
36
Harry Slochower was a professor at Brooklyn College and wrote many books, including
No Voice Is Wholly Lost.
37
Ginsberg's brother, Eugene Brooks.
38
Meyer Schapiro was an art historian who taught at Columbia University and the New School.
39
A reference to a letter that is now missing.
40
The Dancingmaster was a nickname they gave to Justin Brierly, a reference to his ability to manipulate people.
41
Kells Elvins was one of Burroughs's oldest and closest friends.
42
Elbert Lenrow had been planning to take Kerouac and Ginsberg to the Museum of Modern Art to see a screening of Carl Dreyer's film
The Passion of Joan of Arc
before Allen's arrest.
43
Harry Carman was a dean at Columbia University.
44
John Hollander was a Columbia classmate of Ginsberg, and became a poet and conservative literary critic.
45
“Birthday Ode,” written for the birth of Bill Burroughs's son, was later retitled “Surrealist Ode” and published in Ginsberg's
The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice
(DaCapo, 2006).
46
Walter Adams was a classmate of Ginsberg's, and the son of poet Kathrin Traverin Adams.
47
Albert Schweitzer was a missionary, doctor, and theologian who later won the Nobel Peace Prize.
48
Jerry Rauch was one of their Columbia friends.
49
This is the first mention of Carl Solomon, to whom Ginsberg would address
Howl.
50
Nightwood,
by Djuna Barnes, was published in 1936.
51
Alan Harrington was a friend of Kerouac and Holmes who later wrote
The Immortalist.
52
Kerouac had spent time in a Navy mental hospital in Bethesda during the spring of 1943.
53
LuAnne Henderson was Neal Cassady's first wife.
54
Norman Schnall was an early friend of Ginsberg and Kerouac, and is mentioned in the scroll version of
On the Road.
55
Sebastian Sampas was a childhood friend of Kerouac's who died in combat during World War II.
56
Neal Cassady was staying with Diana Hansen, and they were splitting their time between her New York apartment and her mother's in Poughkeepsie. They married later that year.
57
Zagg was one of Kerouac's nicknames from childhood.
58
The Assyrian and Other Stories,
by William Saroyan.
59
The Crippled Giant: A Literary Relationship with Louis-Ferdinand Céline,
by Milton Hindus.
60
Texas, Li'l Darling
is a musical by Johnny Mercer and Robert Emmett Dolan.
BOOK: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg
4.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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