Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (29 page)

I myself am leery of going into dark jungles with Bill . . . he scares me with stories of snakes . . . “they have a boa there that's really tree-bound till the age of so and so then it takes to the water” (in a bored yawning voice). And the malarial mosquito takes a dip with its ass when biting you, it's different from regulars; and the danger of sleeping on the ground is a certain kind of viper with so much venom that there's no cure, you just die. And the Auca, man-killing tribe; and lawless provinces and lawless towns like Manta on the coast; and the staple diet in jungle is monkeys, etc. But I will go if I have the dough, of course. At some point, keep this to yourself, possibly en route from Ecuador to Paris, I will zoom thru New York for a week of reunions and kicks on the sly, mebbe a month hey?

I know you will love
On the Road
⁸⁵
—please read it all, no one has read it all yet . . . Neal had no time, nor Bill.
On the Road
is inspired in its entirety . . . I can tell now as I look back on the flood of language. It is like
Ulysses
and should be treated with the same gravity. If Wyn or Carl insist on cutting it up to make the “story” more intelligible I'll refuse and offer them another book which I'll commence writing at once, because now I know where I'm headed. I have
Doctor Sax
ready to go now . . . or
The Shadow of Doctor Sax,
I'll simply blow on the vision of the Shadow in my 13th and 14th years on Sarah Ave. Lowell, culminated by the myth itself as I dreamt it in Fall 1948 . . . angles of my hoop-rolling boyhood as seen from the shroud. Also, of course, now that
On the Road
is in, I'm going to start sketching here in Mexico . . . for the general basis of my Fellaheen south of the border book about Indians, Fellaheen problems, and Bill the last of the American Giants among them . . . actually a book about Bill. That's two things. And at any leisured moment near libraries (say, if I lived on the Columbia campus, or in Paterson, or a cheap room near 42nd and 5th Avenue) I'm going to execute my Civil War novel which I want to parallel Tolstoy's 1812 hang-ups in 1850s, in other words a historical novel, a big personal gone with the wind about Lucien-like cavalry heroes and Melville-like Bartlebies of draft riots and Whitman-like nurses and especially dumb soldiers from the clay hills staring into the gray mist and void of Chickamauga at dawn. Learning facts of Civil War as I go along. But I'm not sure which (of the first two) ideas will be completed first . . . should be
Doctor Sax
.

Now here is what sketching is. In the first place, you remember last September when Carl first ordered the Neal book and wanted it . . . Sketching came to me in full force on October 25th, the day of the evening Dusty [Moreland] and I went to Poughkeepsie with [Jack] Fitzgerald—so strongly it didn't matter about Carl's offer and I began sketching everything in sight, so that
On the Road
took its turn from conventional narrative survey of road trips etc. into a big multi-dimensional conscious and subconscious character invocation of Neal in his whirlwinds. Sketching (Ed White casually mentioned it in 124th [Street] Chinese restaurant near Columbia, “Why don't you just sketch in the streets like a painter but with words?”) which I did . . . everything activates in front of you in myriad profusion, you just have to purify your mind and let it pour the words (which effortless angels of the vision fly when you stand in front of reality) and write with 100% personal honesty both psychic and social etc. and slap it all down shameless, willy-nilly, rapidly until sometimes I got so inspired I lost consciousness I was writing. Traditional source: Yeats' trance writing, of course. It's the
only way to write
. I haven't sketched in a long time now and have to start again because you get better with practice. Sometimes it is embarrassing to write in the street or anywhere outside but it's absolute . . . it never fails, it's the thing itself natch.

Do you understand sketching?—same as poetry you write—also never overdo it, you should normally get pooped in fifteen minutes' straight scribbling—by that time I have a chapter and I feel a little crazy for having written it . . . I read it and it seems like the confessions of an insane person . . . then next day it reads like great prose, oh well. And just like you say the best things we write are always the most suspected . . . I think the greatest line in
On the Road
(tho you'll disagree) is (apart of course from description of the Mississippi River “Lester is just like the river, the river starts in near Butte Montana in frozen snow caps (Three Forks) and meanders on down across states and entire territorial areas of dun bleak land with hawthorn crackling in the sleet, picks up rivers at Bismarck, Omaha and St. Louis just north, another at Kay-ro, another in Arkansas, Tennessee, comes deluging on New Orleans with muddy news from the land and a roar of subterranean excitement that is like the vibration of the entire land sucked on its gut in mad midnight, fevered, hot, the big mudhole rank clawpole old frogular pawed-soul titanic Mississippi from the North full of wires, cold wood and horn.”)

How do you think I arrived at last four five words if not in trance?

I explained all this method to Neal.

But here's that (best) line “The charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power . . .” This is obviously something I
had
to say in spite of myself . . . tarpaulin, too, don't be frightened, is obviously the key . . . man that's a road. It will take fifty years for people to realize that that's a road. In fact I distinctly remember hovering over the word “tarpaulin” (even thought of writing tarpolon or anything) but something told me that “tarpaulin” was what I'd thought, “Tarpaulin” was what it is . . . Do you understand Blake? Dickinson? and Shakespeare when he wants to mouth the general sound of doom, “peaked, like John a Dreams” . . . simply does what he hears . . . “greasy Joan doth keel the pot; (and birds sit brooding in the snow . . . ”). However I got very tired of blowing all that poetry and am now resting and getting hi and going to movies etc. and trying to read Gore Vidal [
The
]
Judgment of Paris
which is so ugly transparent in its method, the protagonist-hero who is unqueer but all camp (with his bloody tattoo on a thigh) and craptalk, the only thing good, as Bill says, are the satirical queer scenes, especially Lord Ayres or whatever his name . . . and they expect us to be like Vidal, great god.) (Regressing to sophomore imitations of Henry James.) If Carl publishes Genet in drugstores all over America he will have done a service to his century.

Listen, last December, on a whim, I sent Eric Protter a little short story about J. [Jean]—title was “What the Young French Writers should be Writing” and it was that dream of Neal (remember the dialog where he says “I don't understand that spectral canal of yours, Brooklyn scares me, the el's are too mad, I want to go back to the white hills of Frisco” (facsimile) “that pump of yours, those potatoes, those wild orgies with sailors and the bourgeois running across the burning bridge with dogs under their arms, help me” (and all that) I sent to
New Story
, changing all the names to French names (Neal was Jean) and the cities to French cities (New Orleans—Bordeaux) but the little pissyass shit sent it back saying he wanted something more conventional. You know the type. So beware.

You want me to send you (my dear agent you are now boy) some sketches etc. well it's all in
Road
. . . be sure and extract what you like for individual publications, I am egal on the whole thing, it's all good, all publishable . . . (except obvious cases). You can make short pieces out of any part . . . send jazz parts to
Metronome
, to Ulanov
⁸⁶
the vain cock, he thinks the sun rises and sets on his dictionary.

As for peotl—it's grooking in the desert to eat our hearts alive.

What you might do, if Lucien comes to Mex again this summer with Cessa, come with him, if we're still here.

Good for dargolos [Davalos] . . . he sure put old Dusty down that night. What Ed White say? Where's Holmes? Calling for Rock and Rise is in
Road
somewhere . . . around page 490. I won't comment on your splendid letter . . . let us now begin negotiations; write often because (if you have time) I and Bill are lonely. My contract is 10% for first 10,000, then more, 15% . . . we can show
Road
to Scribner's or Simpson or Farrar Straus (Stanley Young) if necessary, change title to
Visions of Neal
or something, and I write new
Road
for Wyn.

But methinks none of such crap necessary. Isn't
Queer
great?

Jack

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to
Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico]

June 12, 1952

 

Dear Jack:

All right, the manuscript arrived a few days ago,
On the Road
. Carl read it, I read it once, and [John Clellon] Holmes has it.

I don't see how it will ever be published, it's so personal, it's so full of sex language, so full of our local mythological references, I don't know if it would make sense to any publisher—by make sense I mean, if you could follow what happened to what characters where.

The language is great, the blowing is mostly great, the inventions have full-blown ecstatic style. Also the tone of speech is at times nearer to un-innocent heart speech (“why did I write this?” and “I'm a criminal”). Where you are writing steadily and well, the sketches, the exposition, it's the best that is written in America, I do believe. I'm not stopping now to write you praise-letter, tho maybe I should etc. etc. but on my mind I am worried by the whole book. It's crazy (not merely inspired crazy) but unrelated crazy.

Well you know your book. Wyn I'm positive won't take it now, I don't know who will. I think could be published by
New Story
people in Europe, but will you be revising it at all? What you trying to put down, man? You know what you done.

This is no big letter, can't see Bill's for reason. I will, all by myself, read book second time, next week, and write you twenty page letter taking book section by section figuring my reactions.

For an on the spot minute guess:

I think book is great but crazy in a bad way, and
got
aesthetically and publishing-wise, to be pulled back together, re constructed. I can't see anyone, New Directions, Europe, putting it out as it is. They won't, they won't.

HODOS CHAMELIONTOS in Yeats is series of unrelated images, chameleon of the imagination diddling about in the void or hang-up, meaning nothing to each other.

Should keep
Sax
into framework of a myth, a FRAMEWORK, and not violate framework by interrupting
Sax
to talk about Lucien's formerly golden hair or Neal's big cock or my evil mind, or your lost bone. The book is the lost bone, itself.

On the Road
just drags itself exhausted over the goal line of meaning to someone else (or to me who knows the story); it's salvageable. I mean it needs to be salvaged. You're handing up the whole goddam junkyard including the I agh up erp esc baglooie ain't you read what I'm shayinoo im tryinting tink try I mea mama thatsshokay but you gotta make sense you gotta muk sense, jub, jack, fik, anyone can bup it, you bubblerel, Zag, Nealg, Loog, Boolb, Joon, Hawk, Nella Grebsnig. And if you doan wanna make sense, shit, then put the nonsense on one page boiled down to one intense nervous collapse out of intelligibility (like [William Carlos] Williams did in a section of
Paterson
, scrambling up the type, and followed it real cool by a list of the geological formations of shale etc. under the fuckin falls, and then went on to say “This is a poem, a POEM.”) and then go on talkin like nothing ever happened cause nothin did. Nothing jess
interrupted
something. But nothing juss keeps breaking in out all over the joint, you'll be talking along, and say “he come out of the room like a criminal—then you'll add—like a shrouder (whoever heard of ?) then you'll add—like black winged rubens—then you'll go poetic and say—like pink winged Stoobens, the hopscotch Whiz of grammar school, hopscotch, the game of Archangels, it's hevvin, it's clouds, meanwhile he was alla time juss commin out of that room, but you got us not only up inna clouds, via Steubenville and urk ep blook, but via also I am JK interrupting myself.

Well maybe it's all three dimensional and awright aesthetically or humanly, so I will re re re read your whole buke, puke anall, (and jeez, Joyce did it, but you're juss crappin around thoughtlessly with that trickstyle
often
, and it's not so good.) reread your whole book I will,

and give you a blow by blow account of
how it comes off
.

And incidentally don't be too flabbergasted flip at my foregoing because I Allen Ginsberg one and only, have just finished cutting down my book from 89 poems to a mere perfect 42, just to cut out the comedy and crap and personalia jackoffs, for leanness, and humanness, it is ACTION WHICH IS DEMANDED AT THIS TIME. That's what he sez, though god know what kind of action he talkin about.

 

Editors' Note:
Kerouac was staying with William Burroughs in Mexico when he received Ginsberg's letter. He was working on the manuscript of
Doctor Sax
and was penniless as usual. After borrowing some money from Burroughs he returned to his sister's house in North Carolina for a brief visit and then headed to San Jose to live with Neal Cassady, who offered to help him get a railroad job.