Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (31 page)

The apparition should be more detailed—not complexified—the plot's complex enough, just simplified and oriented solidly. Words works, I don't know exactly what I mean. But like, the Dutchess you see thrice, you don't know really just what relationship all the evilists have to each other—you don't ever see an actual dovist, just hear rumors (maybe that's ok) of them. The gnomes and all the more complicated machinery is a little too science fiction farfetched. If you want I will send you a detailed appraisal of how much of the myth detail succeeds and how much seems to be anachronism—this is a very important point. Mainly the whole myth succeeds, it's built like a brick shithouse as a grand symbol, some of the details (old shmecker conversations about B between the batman and the contessa) are brilliant, and on the whole most of it was polish, sophistication, intellectual suavity—all of which (intentionally) you failed to achieve in
Town and City
in Francis intellectual decadent sections—but here that awkwardness never everything's real high comedy as you would like to imagine it.

At this point, to recapitulate letter, I have covered what I thought wrong (and OK) about the two wings of your bat book, the reality narrative and the myth narrative and structure.

[ . . . ]

In
On the Road
you failed to produce that eerie human vision of Neal mostly.

This book is an
actual
vision, first one in American lit since who knows?

Practically speaking—that evilists should go down with the ship, be destroyed with the snake, is a great pure pun on happenstance—it happens, like Joan A. [Adams]

Incidentally, in your great long letter you mistake me for an evilist because I am no longer a professed dovist. I am like Ti Jean, a practical boy who feels at certain moments that Dr. Sax is mad and had better be escaped from. A Fieldsian attitude too.

I have been hoping to hear from you. My father said I have a letter at home in Paterson, from Cassady, possibly reply to my postcard, but he sent it on to me but I have not received it, hoping it will not be an evil thing, hoping it will be a pipperone or at least a level crawyak.

I have not written the Shrouded Stranger. Your book poses quite a challenge. We will see about my mediocrity when and if I finish that. Till then I can only admit that since genius is 9/10 perspiration etc. I am worse than mediocre, I am a total failure. And yesterday I received a letter from Carl, counseling me to burn
Empty Mirror
as it was not entertaining, just a “suffering of this self-pity type is worthless.”

I am working at the same place I was when I last saw you. I saw Herb [Huncke] briefly for five minutes several days later. I don't want to see him yet. I have a sweet little pad in Lower East side with heat and hot water, very neat and clean, your own mother wouldn't be ashamed to live there if you know what I mean. Three small rooms, bedroom, kitchen, parlor all $33.80 a month furnished even. Anyone who wants to come visit or stay over is invited, plenty privacy.

My address is 206 East 7th Street Apt. 16 NYC (between Avenue B&C). Dusty [Moreland]'s clothes etc. are here but she is not, we've about broken up by now, I don't know where she sleeps. Being sparse on details as I want to finish this letter with the necessary information.

Give me lowdown if wish on what you intend to do financially. I think I know how
Sax
could be published, with or without revisions (though Jack I still say listen to me when I say what I think about your writing). I will consult with Carl and Holmes (who I don't know how they'll be for actual agenting.)

Suggest you get MCA to handle if they accept it—doubt they will. [Bob] Burford I believe would publish as is. [New] Directions might publish revised. So also Bobbs-Merrill Louis Simpson if revised, maybe as is.

Incidentally nothing in the book strikes me as sexually verbally offensive or censurable, could all be left as is.

Watch out on progress selling
T.&C
. [
The Town and the City
] to paperback. M.C.A. should be asked to. Will write practical details on all of above if asked. You sure shat on me last time I tried to help—

As ever love to

Allen

 

All in all Jack the book is a real triumph for you, a Beethovenian-Melvillian triumph just as you imagine (or don't) imagine.

Do you want me to show it to Van Doren? He would be delighted.

I have been exploring the Lower East Side for the first time really exploring its depth and vastness that I never realized—some streets like Mexican Thieves Market.

 

 

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

Nov. 8 1952

 

Dear Allen,

I read your letter many times. It's very nice, you are very nice to understand my writings. I felt honored.
Doctor Sax
is a mystery. I'm going to leave him the way he is, but not for the same reasons as
On the Road
(enraged, etc.) but because I really like it the way it is, a few things you suggest I will do, like bleak Blook and the child.
Doctor Sax
is only the top of the pot about Lowell . . . the truth buried insane in me, in my head that becomes so inflamed sometimes. I'm trying to speak to you brother to brother, like we were French Canadian brothers. Literature as you see it, using words like “verbal” and “images” etc. and things like, well all the “paraphernalia” of criticism etc. is no longer my concern, because the thing makes me say “shitty little beach in the reeds” is pre-literary, it happened to me to think that way before I learned the words the litterateurs use to describe what they're doing. At this moment I'm writing directly from the French in my head,
Doctor Sax
was written high on tea without pausing to think, sometimes Bill [Burroughs] would come in the room and so the chapter ended there, one time he yelled after me with his long gray face because he could smell the smoke in the yard. You know I was mad at you, but you know it doesn't take me long to stop, and many times I wanted to write you and say “Well, you understand, sometimes I get mad,” etc. I always thought you my little brother, my little petushka, even tho you're Jewish, because you're like a little Russian brother. Lucien has always said to me not to get mad at you—if I get mad, to get mad at those who try to hurt me, like himself ? Neal got mad at me, he wasn't talking to anybody, he hung the phone on me, I got me a fine little room in Skid Row at $4 a week and I was arranging myself so well (and writing a big new novel like
Town and City
) that I was happy for the first time in years, and was saying to myself, “Well, Neal has always been crazy, since the day he put his head in my door at Ozone Park and was making me believe he wanted to learn to write,” quel bull shit eh what? But I was sleeping one night on the railroad, on an old ratty couch, hard asleep after three days and three nights of work and no sleep, Neal was bent over me, hung over me, laughing, “
There
you are buddy! Come on, now, come on, now, no words, come on, now,” so, me, I am here to try to be nice, I go along with him and move back to his house, and then CAROLYN gets mad at me, etc. Bitchy people, I hate people, I can't stand people any more. The phone just called me gotta go to work again, I'm sick and tired of it—This is why it took me so long to answer you, the railroad.

Let's let John Holmes handle
Doctor Sax
, another thing about your letter, and you, always afraid it isn't “right,” etc. like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Adlai Stevenson and the Harvard Law School and United Nations and Dean Acheson ready to fly at any instant with a detailed appraisal of something . . . for what? for what? for what? for what?

See?

GO
is alright when you see it between book covers, it's sincere, each page . . . Truman Capote, Jean Stafford are full of bull on every page . . . so Holmes is better than they I say.

Ah I'd love to see you, maybe I will this Xmas according to my plans of travel. Good Morning to the whole gang.

Your friend

Jack

 

P.S. When you said to yourself “Oh that stupid Kerouac hasn't bothered to put in a plot, just left an undigested mass of images and references etc.” you weren't remembering were you that once it was LOVE animated our poesies, not no anxious techniques. Yes the digging by you of Balzacian jewelpoint (and ah I can't) it means you REALLY did comprehend the book like I thought nobody could, our clairvoyance is together—my good boy.

Editors' Note:
Kerouac spent much of the winter working on the railroad in California, while Ginsberg in New York worked to find publishers for the books of his friends. In order to publicize Burroughs's first book,
Junkie,
which Carl Solomon was helping to publish through his uncle's company, Ace Books, Allen asked that Jack allow his name to be used in the publicity. On the top of the following letter, Kerouac later wrote “Cause of Tiff. ”

 

 

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

February 19, 1953

Thursday Night 10:30

 

“JOHN KEROUAC AND Clellon Holmes, both experts on the Beat Generation, Holmes though his recent
Times Magazine
section controversy, say that they “dig” the pseudonymous William Lee as one of the key figures of the Beat Generation.

“Lee first appeared lurking in the shadows of both of their books, respectively
The Town and the City
and
Go
, portrayed as an underground character. Lee's professional debut in the open on his own as an author is announced by Ace Double Books with the publication of
Junkey: The Confessions of an Unredeemed Junk Addict
, which comes up from underground April 15.

“Author-Junky Lee has not stayed around to gather whatever plaudits are due and was last heard from on an expedition into the Amazon basin in search of a rare narcotic.”

 

Dear Jack:

On the reverse is rough draft [text in quote marks above] of news gossip item for the
Times
that Carl [Solomon] and I and Wyn publicity figured up. I read it to Holmes and it's OK by him. Will be given to
Times
gossip litterateur, David Dempsey.

Please give your permission for your name to be used, and also please send me, for now or later use, with this item, a two sentence plug for Bill [Burroughs] as intense and hi-class as you can make it. Twenty-five words or so. Holmes will contribute also—emphasizing literary value, whatever it is, personality, or perhaps balloonish foolishness of whole project of JUNK.

I am expecting to go out of town this weekend to Paterson on Saturday tho I may be here Friday nite.

John never made it last week to Birdland in time anyway, he came in from Queens, or wherever, half hour late and thought perhaps it was his own fault.

I will call Lu [Lucien Carr] tonight and move into his apt. in a few days perhaps Monday or Tuesday. He'll go away for a month so perhaps we could see him again once before.

Adios. Write that please and send me this week. For dear Will [Burroughs]'s sake.

Yours

Allen

 

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Richmond Hill, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]

Feb. 21, 1953

 

Dear Allen and Sirs:

I do not give my permission for my name to be used in the notes prepared by you and A.A. Wyn and Carl Solomon for David Dempsey's
New York Times
literary notes column. I do not want my real name used in conjunction with habit forming drugs while a pseudonym conceals the real name of the author thus protecting him from prosecution but not myself and moreover whose work at the expense of my name is being bruited for book trade reasons.

In this “rough draft publicity” I do not want
The Town and the City
mentioned in juxtaposition to
Go
, by association hinting at some professional and artistic semblance, and I deny permission to place my name next to Clellon Holmes as a co-expert on the
Beat Generation
.

Especially I do not want to be misquoted as saying that I “dig the pseudonymous William Lee as one of the key figures of the Beat Generation.” My remarks on the subject of either the pseudonymous author William Lee or the generation are at your disposal through the proper channels, from my pen and through my agent.

Yours most respectfully and strictly business,

John Kerouac

 

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

February 24, 1953

Mr. Jack Kerouac
94-21 134 Street
Richmond Hill, New York

 

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your two prompt replies of the 21st to my letter of the 20th.
⁸⁷
I am sincerely aggrieved that my original appeal appeared to violate certain proprieties of your situation which you explained in your letters, and I hasten to set this matter right on all counts.

Before I proceed let me congratulate you on the charm and incisiveness of the quotation which you authorize; which quotation I will naturally submit to your agent for his (her) approval before making use (there)of.

There are two delicate matters which I wish to mention: While I approve your wish to dissociate your own literary position with that of the author of
Go
(who incidentally gave his general permission, etc. without consulting MCA) and while I will do everything in my power to aid you in doing so, especially in this instance, it behooves me to remind you as a friend that, adopting your suggestion of separate statements, no further reference will be made by me to anyone that it was at your request. In other words, let us do this as quietly as possible, so as not to risk offending Mr. Holmes. If you wish to make a public matter of this, of course, that is your privilege, and I will follow suit.