Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (16 page)

Ah, yes, I remember well the road leading to Central City, and the small hills there. I was hoping you lived there. Pommy [Neal Cassady] and I once rode around there all over the side roads leaving firecrackers under people's porches in the middle of the night. When you write, tell me how your mother is feeling about Denver, and what she says. Also, is there any difficulty about writing? I mean, about your receiving letters from me? If there is, we should do something practical to straighten out that. I could write care of general delivery.

Yes, however, I believe that Dennison is right, too.

When I next write—incidentally I will for sure be in the crazy house when I next write, so don't worry—I will probably have finished a poem about the lines I wrote a while ago

I have some of it written: it will tell Pommy; I am writing a prophetic poem for Pommy; it will see all, hear all, know all; I am the witness for Pommy, though he doesn't know; it endeth:

Followed by several more as yet unwritten stanzas describing the mansions of the Lord. Maybe I will also throw in, for good measure, that my name is angel and my eyes are fire, and that All Who Follow Shall Be Rewarded With My Favor.

May I have the title for “Tip My Cup,” to use bookishly? Also, think up more, and send them to me; better we will write our own mutual poem, and I will publish it in my book under your name, and you in yours in mine, and he and she in It's. We'll call it the Natural Top. Who shall it be dedicated to? Poe? Walter Adams?
⁴⁶
Ignu VII of Egypt? Oscar Bop? The survivors of Thermopylae? Bobby Pimples? Hysterical Larry?

Speaking of epileptics (and I promise you that this is the last time I mention Pommy's name) do you know that Fyodor was, as you say, just like Pommy? I read a book written by Mrs. D. [Dostoevsky] describing the days when he was gambling in Baden, and how she used to weep and cry alone at home, expecting a baby, while Fyodor was gambling his last ruble, his last kopeck, even, and finally coming home, throwing himself weeping at her feet, offering to commit suicide to demonstrate his love for her, and making her give him her shawl off her shoulders so that he could pawn it to play some more. She poor wretch, didn't know what to do, prided herself on being understanding, and then felt justified when one day he came home with a fortune he'd won; they celebrate, and then he goes out and loses it all the next day; and all starts up again, and happens every week and goes on for weeks and weeks and months, and a whole half year, with hysterical scenes and pacifications and entreaties every other night, like a hotel room in Denver, until at last he's so beat that he can't go on—he hasn't any more money, blames himself, cries that he is a failure. Finally he falls at her feet sobbing like an injured child, helpless and in an epileptic; so she bundles him up in her coats and takes him down the R.R. station and they go to Russia. What a great, mad book, by Mrs. D. Probably in Denver Library. Years later he writes about it (in a few letters) and what he says about her, sounds like a wise and aged Pommy recollecting his own lifetime. But a wise and aged Pommy, naturally still vigorous, much more insight, on account of years. If you are curious what Pommy might be really truthfully (to self) thinking in years.

See, I have without planning, spent hours writing you. I hereby present them to you as a gift, free. No strings.

Allen

 

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to
Jack Kerouac [Denver, Colorado]

ca.
June 29, 1949

From the Wizard of Paterson
To the Wizard of Denver

 

Mon Cher Jean Louis:

Enfin J'ai arrivais au maison du Koko; ici les animaux sont tres interresant, il y est un homme in de vinget et n annees, une surrealiste qui me fait riri avec son inspire imagination fauve, et aussi son weltanschaunung est comme cela de M. Denison
[Burroughs]
, mais ce jeune homme ci (tres laid) est une jinf de Brom/ et anssi une Hipster. Mais il est fou. Ech, ce francois ci m'enneri.

The atmosphere is weird. I have an idea (how true it is I will I suppose find out soon enough) that the attendants have not too clear an idea as to the nature of madness; to them it is characterized by absurdity or eccentricity mostly. I rather had hoped to come to a judgment of my soul under the clear light of sane eyes. Tomorrow night we see a performance of Rumpelstiltskin, however.

Ecrivez moi, ecrivez moi, j'attend, faisey-vous l'effort de etre du moins au moins un pen balance et grave, pas trop fou
(perhaps it will improve your literary style?)
mais ecrivez avec une style libre
anyway. The mail is read before it gets to me. Say what you want, but don't write me tracts suggesting that I dynamite the establishment for instance. I mean, they may take offense.

Love,

Allen

 

Give me news of whoever is newsworthy.

OK. I got a mad long letter from [John Clellon] Holmes—asking me about my soul. I replied at great length. He kept disclaiming personal interest and insisted that he was interested in the Visionary in relation to the Lyric Poem, and the processes of literary creation. It would be a big joke on me if he was really interested in cold facts. He is at Cape Cod. No news from or to Claude [Lucien Carr]. I am now a bleak prophet. (Bleak eternity) (Bleak heavens) (Bleak smile) I have come to love the word bleak, it suggests just the quality of timeless joy possible that I feel in a key.

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Denver, Colarado] to
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]

July 5-11, 1949

July 5, 1949
6100 W. Center Ave.
Denver 14, Colo.

 

Dear Allen:

I admire you for delivering yourself to an actual bughouse. It shows your interest in things and people. Be careful while convincing the docs you're nuts not to convince yourself (you see, I know you well.) Isn't it interesting that Holmes' letter demanding information about your soul should reach you there? Relax on the roof and get fresh air anyway.

In connection with this sort of thing, let me quote from an article I read last night in the
Pharr Gazette
, by a certain M. Denison [Burroughs] (a local editor with a fiery temper): He says, about another farmer in the region, called Gillette [Allen Ginsberg], who was taken to a sanatorium in Houston after he killed his wife:—“What's with Al Gillette talking about the Wrath of God? Has he flipped his lid? We have the W. of G. down here in the shape of Border Patrol agents, deporting our field hands, and D. of Agriculture Beaurocrats telling us what, where and when to plant. Only us farmers have other names for it. And if any obscenity bunch of beaurocrats think we're going to sit on our (ass) and let the W. of G. take over, they will learn that we are not Liberals.” (!) (Notice the spelling—beaurocrat, a kind of southern plantation spelling, a Missouri aristocrat spelling.)

The editor goes on (in Immortal Complaints in the Chaunce [
sic
] of Time):—“If your editor were in Gillette's place he would say ‘Go ahead and place your charges, if any.' ” (The editor considers Gillette innocent in the case, which took place in Clem, Texas.) “His present position is insufferable. Imagine being herded around by a lot of old women like Louis Gillette [Louis Ginsberg] and Mark V. Ling [Van Doren]. Besides I don't see why V. Ling puts in his 2 cents worth. Sniveling old Liberal fruit . . . All Liberals are weaklings, and all weaklings are vindictive, mean and petty. Your editor sees nothing to gain from this Houston deal. A lot of New Deal Freudians. Your editor wouldn't let them croakers up there treat his corn let alone his psyche.”

After reading this amazing editorial I called up Denison, and among other things he said to me: “I have just done reading Wilhelm Reich's latest book
The Cancer Biopathy
. I tell you Jack, he is the only man in the analysis line who is
on that beam
. After reading the book I built an orgone accumulator and the gimmick really works. The man is not crazy he's a F——genius.” He added, concerning the editorial: “The overpaid beaurocrats are a cancer on the political body of this country which no longer belongs to its citizens.”

Incidentally I am going down there to visit, in August.

Sad things happened in Denver. My mother was lonely and beat, and went back to New York yesterday and got her shoe-factory job back. She is
right
, as usual. I'll explain later. So I am moving back to New York and will live there forever now. My mother is a great trooper—wants to earn own living.

Also, Edie [Parker Kerouac] and I are practically back together again, by mail. Now that I sold my book she is most interested in me. She said “When you're a Hollywood writer and live in a big mansion, I have first dibs for parasiting off of you.” I am going to try to make her go to school in New York this fall (she studies Floralculture.) Her mother married the Berry of the Berry Paint, and they all live in a mansion on Lake Shore, Detroit, now; Edie has a room in the tower (!) And in the Spring I will bring her to Paris with me, and write
Doctor Sax
. If I have enough money by then I am definitely financing your own Voyage there. I envision a season in New York and then an Immense Season in Paris in 1950 (including Claude [Lucien Carr], and even Vern [Neal Cassady] if I am rich enough.) If I become rich we'll all be saved by overcoming the bigness of the night, the red, red night.

Well I began writing “The Rose of the Rainy Night” this week, to amuse myself while doing
On the Road
and to prepare for the “Myth [
Doctor Sax
].” “The Rose” is a big Spenserian work of many cantos. It opens:

As you see, it isn't so good, but I'll fix it. I merely put down what comes into my head, though not recklessly. This way, I'll pile up a big Rose and have something to pluck out, petals:—

However, now I understand poetry and am just going along. My prose has improved because of these studies. I'll just copy one sentence, it would be too much, you'll read it all later:

“And by and by all the lights but one dim hall-light were out, and the men were shrouded in May-night sheets, preparing their minds to sleep.” This is in a jail. The hero, Red, is listening . . . “To his right Eddy Parry seemed to moan, alone; to roll his own bones on the hard, hot pad; unless he moaned to someone in the next cell further.”

This demonstrates the utter gravity and importance of our poetic experimentations, for they reach the rational atmospheres of the prose-sentence as in Melville's prose make it more than that, much, much more.

Here again, the influence of pure preoccupations with language appearing in, and strengthening, the scaffolded exigencies of the reasonable and light-of-day prose sentence—

“And when the silence increased, then it was possible for Red and anyone else who was awake and listening, to hear the great sea-roar of New York outside: the rumorous Saturday night stretching its tide far over the wash of the vast eventful plain—with its towering Knight-island, and basins, and outreaching apian dark flats to Rockaway, and to Yonkers cliff, to blue-shawled New Jersey, and the Jamaican reaches that guttered like altar waxes on the hooded horizon—the Saturday night of ten million secret and furiously living souls to which Red, now considering it half-heartedly and half drowsy, would soon return, himself a secret and furious and excited motion in that ocean of life antique. For what reason? Why had he no wild interest in the mere day? the mere night? in here? anywhere?”

But later that night Red has a vision (all minutely and swirlingly described) and is Resurrected out of Glooms:—

Among his visions are:

“Now, inexplicably, he was sitting in the movie looking avidly at the crazy-serious gray screen and what it was showing; and looking at the curtains beside the screen, and even at some hunchbacked old man with a top hat who scowled there beside a stepladder. He then saw a kind of vision of a candy bar, an immense Mr. Goodbar—a candy he always ate as a kid in movie,—and began eating it slowly from the corner inwards, peanut by peanut, all hunched over it with hugging delight. Also, it was raining outside, but warm and dark in the movie where he jubilantly lay hidden with his feet on the forward seat. It was the Marx Brothers on the screen, with everything going mad and almost exploding, Harpo hanging from a rope from the attic window, Groucho gliding in the marble hall with a lion, something collapsing, a woman screaming in the closet. And then it was a western movie, Buck Jones in arid plains rolling along in clouds of dust on a big white horse—a rainy gray myth on the screen, the myth of the gray West, with crooks in vests pursuing behind on ordinary horses, and another posse roaring in from the creaky rickety town. A big face appeared on the screen turning slowly in profile, a man's face with fluttering eyelashes. Who was this? Vern?”