Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (38 page)

I can't write a
Visions of Bill,
I haven't your imagination and heart for detail, you are after all the greater driver. It is all I can do to sit down and scribble fragments of thoughts for poems. When I write prose I get so deliberate it turns out bare and hopeless really nowhere like the Acavalna paper. I wrote it for facts for Lucien. Bill and Ansen tell me to try prose but I don't understand what they're talking about, it's impossible, it would kill me to keep sitting at a desk going off into abstract tangents writing and writing and writing. I'm too sick at heart for such an effort. I do what I can without putting myself thru torment. It doesn't seem to torture you to write prose but it is really nerve-wracking for me. It seems such shit, prose I've written. I'm not being humble like Neal who can, either. I admire your prose but feel too hopeless to ever catch up with all the massive detail and freedom and blowing.

Love, Baby.

Allen

 

 

Jack Kerouac [New York, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [n.p., San Jose, California?]

July 30, 1954

July 30,

 

Dear Allen,

I've been very depressed all day and now I'm having a well needed rum and coke; I wondered if you've been depressed all this day too, Friday July 30th, judging from our past telepathies . . . I've been so generally down all week I have not yet mailed the [
Some of the
]
Dharma
to you, which I do Monday when I buy a big envelope . . . I hope you like it; I hope it instructs you . . . Myself, having really just reach'd the nadir of Nirvana-understanding, am probably depressed as an aftermath . . . I tell you I had a vision of emptiness to put an end to all of em . . . More later in the letter.

Lucien came to my house one night, sneaking in the door like my old Paw's buddies used to do, squeaking followed by Jim Hudson and Jim Crayon and quarts of Irish Whisky. We drank in my lil room and Lucien took your big letter, your 2nd smaller letter and all the pictures he could find and stuffed them in his pocket . . . [Here, four lines of the letter are completely blacked out, with a marginal notation “He read Neal's letter and didn't like it.”] I saw Lucien again several days later, after, that first night, we drove wildly around Long Island looking for newspapermen, squeaking wheels, Lou making wild U-turns right on the turfed dividers of superhighways, fast, leaping over curbs and just missing park benches, reminding me of your Mexico hayride and I wasn't scared . . . several days later Kells Elvins called Lou to get me, and we all met in Sellman's, then Lucien kindly offered to drive Kells to a girl's house in New Jersey, tho he had to be at Cessa's at 10 . . . at 10 we were sneaking and whispering down his street in the Village and getting into his car, Kells, him, me, three girls, and Hudson—went out to New Jersey and had a good time. Generally Lucien seems fine and the same as ever, which means, he is Lucien and indefatigably manly.

I passed the Swiss Oaks bar and peeked in and Dusty [Moreland] saw me and came out and wanted me to take your pictures to her and tell her what you're doing and show her your letters. I confess I ain't done this. Please write to her, she's anxious to hear. She looked good.

Alene [Lee] turned out to be a real little tit, called me and asked me to bring
The Subterraneans
and then we were sposed to discuss it and instead she had Sherman Hikox in her sack when I knocked on the door, he made cracks, such as, “She's gone to publish
The Subterraneans
,” so I started to break the door down and got my
Subs
back. However every tom dick and harry read it while she had possession of it, including Gregory [Corso], who is contemptuous of it, and Gould,
⁹⁹
who is very charming to me now and I think is a full-blown Cannastra saint by now. I recommend Gould to you when you get back to NY. But Gregory's aright too, he ran into Kells and me in the Village and had a “novel” with him, short looking, written like Saroyan, and was humble and asked about you even.

Kells is a wonderful guy, made me mad as hell when he said he needed to go to a psychiatrist . . . the psychiatrist said “You need therapy immediately” so naturally Kells goes around borrowing huge sums,
a la
Burroughssian flair, and here I am raging at him to go down the public library and take out Buddha for god's sake. How silly. “At once” indeed, these conmen . . . as Bill would say, such impudence.

At your request, I pondered and remembered your 1948 Harlem visions, and they were the granddaddy of em all . . . accurate too . . . prophetic of Buddha. I would say you are a Sage, an elephant among Kings, a veritable Ananda among men, you have more naturals in you than Old Bull Balloon . . . Strange to say, tho, I see you very clearly now as more a Chinese type sage, a Taoist, a Chuangtse, than a Buddhist . . . I am now reading Tao over again carefully; Chuangtse especially, who is absolutely brilliant; I find Indian Buddhism almost impossible to practice; Tao is a more elastic, more humane philosophy whereas Buddhism is an ascetic way of life tacked on to a philosophy . . . ascetism and yogism are hard on a big boned fella like me, sensual wine lover, woman lover like me . . . bum like me . . . I think I'll become a wandering Taoist Bum . . . wanta come?

Allen, your visions of Harlem, your Leviathan, your reality opening itself a moment to reveal itself, your sudden recognition of ancient anguish and coyness on the faces of people on the sidewalk, your eerie discovery of the Idea behind objects instead of the apparent objects themselves, all smacks of clairvoyance

 

P.S. Don't forget to dig Frisco negro jazz with Neal in Nash—Loud!!

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [San Jose, California] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., New York, New York?]

ca
. early August 1954

 

Dear Jack:

I keep thinking of writing you, since I sent last letter did you [receive] it? Sent to Richmond [Hill]. The duke doth not answer. Oh yet yes, I was to add a longer note in time later. The main problem, is, I want to send on a lot of poetry, to a sure destination, and it is not at all finished. Things go slowly. I put long poems aside for future endings. I read in basic prosody seeking for the yellow springs (of Chinese death) and conceive images, blasphemous and sensual “hidden in skin” and the airiest most abstract hymns to blue love, or green love or whatever, grasping stray vultures and hawks from the cages of heaven in this wooden house where I dwell in the prison of my life as thou dids't here too then untimely once or twice overing, or thrice was it?

There's too many poems to finish and not one really done, all these fragments small and large. And the possibility now after Indo China and Ike's admission that U.S. containment policy would be replaced by a weaker more limited policy of cold war—are we losing? Is the Fall of America already upon us? The Great Fall we once prophesied. I wrote my brother “and it will be horrible to see, broken machinery and cracked pavement I mean.” My god all hell will break loose here when Asia begins fucking us, so the possibility of a prophetic poem, using ideas of politics and war and calling on love and reality for salvation, etc. Imagine throwing in Cayce ideas no—too complicated. What by the way do you think of rebirth? Is it also a Buddha Buddy Bhud Boo Oom sh-bam, idea? Have you heard “Life Could Be Dreamy” by that popular swinging group of spades, (and their imitators) I forgot. It has a ding a ling or ling a ling dining car harmony bob sonority. Also a canzon: “There's a riot going on (in Cell No. 9) / The scarface jones / come up and said / it's too late now / cause the fuse is lit / There's a riot going on (chorus)”

I am still not working, waiting to hear my fate at the railroad. I flunked the physical with that old evil mysterious (anti-Semitic?) Dr. STRANGE of the SP [Southern Pacific]; appealing speedily to Dr. Washburne head of SP Hospital Medicine he sustained me and accepted me. Now waiting in second week for verification of my victory or bureaucratic victimage. I tried for brakeman, no jobs, got OK'd by yardmaster for yard clerk. Waiting. Even if I make it business may be slow. But nonetheless trying to make it.

[ . . . ]

In Frisco I spent much time with Sublette and friend Vic, describe another time, big ex-army actor cat seaman a man and right hearted we drank wine in room for days. And walk a bit by the pool hall. Ed Roberts too, twice, another unidentified Gene, solomonesque, Neal once, other dark men. I also visited Kenneth Rexroth a poet who had read and dug
Junkie
on his own who conversed with me till 11 and drove me downtown for late train and is reader for New Directions—we must approach him with your work. Did Directions reject? What has happened there in the end, huh? We may be able to do something, maybe not. Anyway he'll read anything given him and is an old friend and worker of [James] Laughlin. Also a very easy guy ex hip about forty-five, speaks Greek, and Latin, Chink, Jap, etc. and is an anarchist and bleeding heart art martyr he says Kenneth Patchen he likes the most, and writes poem for all the dead great minor and major poets he's known that died too young or miserable lived or died. But very good, he likes to make believe he's tough and don't give shit and in a revolution against society and he does add to its small literature in a nice way. I mean he ain't Pound but one of the older disciples though he's independent etc. etc. all this crap. Big library, married, children, lives cheap as man of letters, knows everybody young and old subterranean or interested. Likes [Bill] Keck, respects his dignity that is. I told him something about you, Bill [Burroughs].

So as yet won't send poems. Maybe wait till you get here or till finished really. All I could send you is small and like my old style: but the longer more historic not done.

Bill writes still, he will be here at my invitation etc. September or later. Date not set, he'll visit family first. What are your plans? I really hope I'm working then because if so I hope to really have some kind of enjoyable life, not just an old mad city of fusty employed. Want to dig museums and movies and Yosemites, study, write, talk. And love? Well that comes from heaven I guess, or nowhere.

Love from paradise,

Allen

[ . . . ]

Also I have not said anything about the household, well here it is, Neal plays chess. I come 10,000 miles and he sits and plays chess with the neighbor and I baby-sit and goof, Carolyn out tonight for instance. Neal now back next doors where Dick Wood baby-sits for his wife, and, before, he stuck his nose in the chess book to read and could hardly be roused to a civil word. He wakes every few days or a week for surprise conjunctions—all too rarely with any pathos or feeling—of the bodies, but heaven refuses to fall and there is the usual discord between him and Carolyn, so bitter his behavior so long suffering, or abusive, or angry—never openly hurt. She's hurt. But she can be shrewish. Does she really love? I thought so. We were familiar awhile, and there is some coldness, now, though we patch up and are polite and sometimes involved in interesting conversation. Sometimes my mind drifts. Often I can't get across an idea, a new idea, an objective one, poetic. Political, religious, we nearly came to blows over what your nothing means nothing means. But Neal is a loss! what contradictions of character. What compulsive shuffling of cards sex cards. And the handkerchief. Tales of Watsonville, SF, uttered guiltily with eye out for wife secrecy. The mad chess. He won't talk to me. He hides in chess, he perfects his game. The time he's studying it now expertising WC Fields, “Tell Jack? Why . . . tell him I'll beat his lard ass in a chess game!” So the silence in the house I read and write. I bring out a poem and force it on him or her. He expresses like in the most general terms, won't hardly ever talk art or nothing . . . except Cayce that gets him in a good mood . . . a gleam in his eye . . . I express a doubt a heresy, he gets mad “at me! the poor fool (madman) He is not a man!” (Rimbaud) But the hopelessness of it, he won't be soft. His concerns are, if there, hidden except for flashes that you can't trust, they're so sudden and offhand, the really personal things. It's cold and bitter when we make it too. Well . . . I will I hope soon be working. Other here, perhaps I'll geta pad nearby. I have what to do, to keep me busy. But it's a sham. I feel strange. Today I have a cold, caught from Hinkle's kids.

“. . . In a silence of facts to die?” Oh Jack, he's losing time, sweet earthly time. Is he waiting? Is he waiting—I mean for anything or life that was promised? He won't write because he wants to write sex and it's a Cayce sin. She agrees. But he won't write anything else right now. Says he's quit. He's quit. What? Why!? What future?? What will he do, what can he do? Trapped in R.R. etc. He doesn't want to leave here either really. This is the best deal. Why am I here? I hardly know.

But you come out too. We'll, we'll do something. Bill will be O.K. and write. I will make it.

Love

Allen

 

I'm afraid to say too much here—this is strictly for you not the public if any.

 

 

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

August 23 '54

 

Dear Allen,

Dedicating this joint to you as I start. Have a list of notes made from reading your letter and shall follow it as is writ. “Life Could Be a Dream,” yes I dug that tune and the singers of it and it was a little Angel of Africa turned me on it, Bob Young by name, he's got close cropped (no) hair and black face and lisps and wanted me to go to his pad etc. but just bought me drinks on Bleecker Tavern and said really strange and mystical things about that tune, too, like you . . . I told him life IS a dream, he said no only if you lived with me . . . you might meet him someday if you want.