Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (30 page)

 

 

Jack Kerouac [San Jose, California] to
Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, New Jersey]

October 8, 1952

 

Allen Ginsberg

This is to notify you and the rest of the whole lot what I think of you. Can you tell me even for instance . . . with all this talk about pocket book styles and the new trend in writing about drugs and sex why my
On the Road
written in 1951 wasn't ever published?—why they publish Holmes's book [
Go
] which stinks and don't publish mine because it's not as good as some of the other things I've done? Is this the fate of an idiot who can't handle his own business or [is] it the general fartsmell of New York in general . . . And you who I thought was my friend—you sit there and look me in the eye and tell me the
On the Road
I wrote at Neal's is “imperfect” as though anything you ever did or anybody was perfect? . . . and don't lift a finger or say a word for it . . . Do you think I don't realize how jealous you are and how you and Holmes and Solomon all would give your right arm to be able to write like the writing in
On the Road
. And leaving me no alternative but to write stupid letters like this when if instead you were men I could at least get the satisfaction of belting you all in the kisser—too many glasses to take off. Why you goddamn cheap little shits are all the same and always were and why did I ever listen and fawn and fart with you—fifteen years of my life wasted among the cruds of New York, from the millionaire jews of Horace Mann who'd kissed my ass for football and now would hesitate to introduce their wives to me, to the likes of you . . . poets indeed . . . distant small-sized variants of same . . . baroque neat-packaged acceptable (small print in the middle of neat page of poetry book) page . . . Not only have you grieved me now by your statement that there is nothing in
On the Road
you didn't know about (which is a lie because at just one glance I can see that you never knew the slightest beginning detail of even something so simple as Neal's work life and what he does)—and [Carl] Solomon pretending to be an interesting saint, claims he doesn't understand contracts, why in ten years I'll be lucky to have the right to look into his window on Xmas eve . . . he'll be so rich and fat and so endowed with the skinny horrors of other men into one great puff-ball of satisfied suckup . . . Parasites every one of you, just like Edie said. And now even John Holmes, who as everybody knows lives in complete illusion about everything, writes about things he doesn't know about, and with hostility at that, (it comes out in hairy skinny legs of Stofsky and “awkward” Pasternak, the sonofabitch jealous of his own flirtatious wife, I didn't ask for Marian's attentions . . . awkwardness indeed, I imagine anybody who walks on ordinary legs would look awkward around effeminate flip-hips and swish like him)—And the smell of his work is the smell of death. . . . Everybody knows he has no talent . . . and so what right has he, who knows nothing, to pass any kind of judgment on my book—He doesn't even have the right to surl in silence about it—His book stinks, and your book is only mediocre, and you all know it, and my book is great and will never be published. Beware of meeting me on the street in New York. Beware also of giving any leads as to my whereabouts. I'll come up to New York and trace down the lead. You're all a bunch of insignificant literary egos . . . you can't even leave New York you're so stultified . . . Even [Gregory] Corso with his Tannhauser chariots running down everyone else has already begun to pick up . . . Tell him to go away . . . tell him to find himself in his own grave . . . My heart bleeds every time I look at
On the Road
. . . I see it now, why it is great and why you hate it and what the world is . . . specifically what you are . . . and what you, Allen Ginsberg, are . . . a disbeliever, a hater, your giggles don't fool me, I see the snarl under it . . . Go ahead and do what you like, I want peace with myself . . . I shall certainly never find peace till I wash my hands completely of the dirty brush and stain of New York and everything that you and the city stand for . . . And everybody knows it . . . And Chase knew it long ago . . . that is because he was an old man from the start . . . And now I am an old man too . . . I realize that I am no longer attractive to you queers . . . Go blow your Corsos . . . I hope he sinks a knife in you . . . Go on and hate each other and sneer and get jealous and . . . My whole record in NY is one long almost humorous chronicle of a real dumb lil abner getting taken in by fat pigjaws . . . I realize the humour of it . . . and laugh just as much as you . . . But here on in I'm not laughing . . . Paranoia me no paranoias either . . . Because of people like you and Giroux . . . even with G. you fucked me up from making money because he hated you . . . and came in with Neal that night and Neal right away wanted to steal a book from the office, sure, what would you say if I went to your NORC [National Opinion Research Center] and stole things and made fun of it . . . and Lucien with his shitty little ego trying to make me cry over Sarah and then telling me at the lowest ebb of my life that I would be awful easy to forget . . . He must know by now unless be-sotted and stupid with drink that it is so about everybody . . . how easily one may disappear . . . and be forgotten completely . . . and make dark corruption spot in dirt . . . well alright. And all of you, even Sarah I don't even care to know any more or who will ever hear of this insane letter . . . all of you fucked me up . . . with the exception of Tony Monacchio and a few other angels . . . and so I say to you, never speak to me again or try to write or have anything to do with me . . . besides you will never probably see me again . . . and that is good . . . the time has come for all you frivolous fools to realize what the subject of poetry is . . . death . . . so die . . . and die like men . . . and shut up . . . and above all . . . leave me alone . . . and don't ever darken me again.

Jack Kerouac

 

 

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

ca.
November 1-7, 1952, but before November 8, 1952

 

Dear Jack:

I just finished
Doctor Sax
, it's hard to write you because of all previous crap with
On the Road
and your letter—hard to accept or deny reality of your letter—but that aside.

I think
Dr. Sax
is better than
On the Road
(I'm expounding here on just harmony and appearance—
On the Road
has great original method to be sure) and I think also it can be published—unlike what I thought of
On Road
.
Sax
is a big success for my money, as a completed project.

Though I think you can still do more with it and it ought to be rewritten it's still muddy and creaky here and there. But on the whole its construction is mainly perfect—particularly the final revelations of the last pages, and the general sanity of whole approach makes it possible to appreciate the delights of moment to moment verbal creation.

I believe with
On the Road
and
Sax
, which makes that tendency crystal clear, you really have hit a whole lode of originality of method of writing prose—method incidentally though like Joyce is your own origin and make and style, similarities only superficial your neologisms are not foggy philological precisions but aural (hear-able) inventions that carry meanings.

And the aural cadence of your prose which Joyce also specializes in—is done without much damage to natural sequences of sentence construction. He had to melt and fuckup sentences, and fuggup words and fog them to get them to join in melodious series. I notice your melodies are often in an Irish-Joyce mélange of the sentence, but in a natural Nealish speak cadence.

Your imagery—which is simple like Lucien's, is also new-old humble poetry (illustration later on)

The philosophic line is satisfactory and has moments of sublimity. By satisfactory I mean harmonious and symmetrical. Not just a Chinese puzzle.

The structure of reality and myth—shuttling back and forth, is a stroke of genius: casting the myth within the frame of childish fantasy, so giving it reality [?] in terms of its frame.

The trouble with the reality side of your book, I think it isn't too interesting all the time, I get bored by it, because it's partly a series of incidents unrelated except by process of general association—i.e. it has not much compel[ing] inner structure to make you want to read on and find out what is going on or what is happening in the real life of [?] that is being symbolized by this grand fantasy life. Also it waters down interest in real life recollections not to have them tied down to anything personally central—except the hint of discovery of Sex. The flood, too helps maintain interest as it builds up, in real life. Perhaps if you felt inclined to improve this book you might put in what was actually there—some great reality crisis as what you've had in last years, or some earlier reality crisis like sex, I don't know, whatever in real terms the imaginary myth might correspond to in real life human development preadolescent trials and traumas. I'm not being clinical, tho I'm not writing poetry here, just observations. The real life side of the books was held together for me by the intrinsic interest of the experiences described, anecdotes, and incidents etc. and secondly held my interest to it by the continual brilliance of the language—so that at times I even felt that nothing was happening at all except verbally, but that was enough—though as in parts of
On the Road
, that can be too much meaningless bop to keep the attention fixed upon, even if you try to follow.

I have described the flaw I thought about the naturalistic side; that is to say I respect the total structure of the book but wish to estimate it clearly for you as I see it, in its particulars, also, still, despite possible horrors of criticism.

I would have to read book over again to figure out what I think is wrong with the mythological structure as it is interwoven. Mainly at the moment it seems to me almost just right. I felt it was too sketchy at first till I reached the long explanations of Dovish politics, Blook, etc. page 191—explanations so breathless and coming just at a point when I was getting so irritated with the confusion (I was cursing you—that stupid Kerouac hasn't even bothered to shove in a plot to all the supernatural gossip—just left an undigested mass of images and references and rumors) but there you came in with a whole explanation—which by this time I couldn't think possible to give, anyway, but now so clear it seemed like a miracle (like cleanup of detective story with clues). Thank god.

Blook isn't as interesting as he might be—as he was in conversation, not an important creation, you fell down on old Blook—the scene where he meets child while burying an onion is not here—and rushes screaming away in fright, you could have said “up walks Ti Jean just at that moment behind the bush where bleak Blook stood timidly soliloquizing the onion grave” or some such nonsense utilizing the phrase bleak Blook. Perhaps with Sax on trip to the castle.

The conceptions are all very original and must have been hard to set down to do, though, though great delight to conceive, as they were to read. Great idea of trip to castle, great moment observing the town with Sax and boy, great Dovish and Evilist controversy—in fact I think more attention and time spent to details of the myth would be just great—it is the real caviar of the whole book—so intelligent, so apt as metaphysical and
social
commentary, so
hip
and yet so public in reference. I don't see why you can't do more of that and wave book greater.

Would love to talk to you—on plot.

[ . . . ]

Section of reality about the poems is confusing. Where are all the old poems you had in Diana's apartment years ago? I think I have some. I don't too much dig the poems, nor the seeming sloppy and foggy way you worked them into the text. Seems to me like jerry built intrusion. Should be poems (more meaningful ones, in specific context of dovish or evilist significance, or final giant-bird significance, or Sax preparation significances. But on first reading your poems seemed to be just fucking mells and mells and I said “O shit” when I saw them, I thought they were going to be really funny, but it was just a bunch of interesting lines (hodos chameliantos—chameleon imagery) with a few illuminating ones scattered here and there—the poems weren't part of the whole conspiracy enough, just tacked in by your enthusiasm it seemed.

Have you as a child ever visited someone older (like old negro or teacher) and sat daily in their parlor among brocades listening to their transaction of life, fed cookies watching their world go on without understood significance before your innocent eyes?

So perhaps there should be an earlier meeting and rapport with Sax, with more detailed plot of the preparation shown the reader, more action and familiarity with the Dutchess, Blook, Sax. The wizard (all those great creations, you realize, have scarcely a page or two apiece—and they are the great figures of the book—devoted to their characters and daily life and humor-actions and gossips etc and anecdotes—so that I hardly know anything about Condu and the Wizard—they seem like the same persona practically, and not different identities—and Adolphus Ghoulens (does he mean to appear as the author of the document?) (just for the joke of the name?) and Amadeus Baroque—all these figures good for real fine Mozartean comedy (like the wonderful career of Boaz Jr. until it gets too confused with frozen children imagery—a little out of anachronism with focus of reality) are neglected and not given full life—you treat them as if they were just around to be mentioned and dismissed as part of the general joke, but they need further development—otherwise their full significance (which you know now only in your own head) is lost on the average reader, and that includes me too.