Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (47 page)

That's not exactly verbatim but that was his answer. He obviously likes it and's read thru everything I give him (even asked to see Bill's Tangiers material) but can't get no action out of him. He keeps suggesting Edmund Wilson and Grove. I'll send the manuscripts back—where?
Visions
to you and
Sax
to [Sterling] Lord? I've reread both, they're both great, sorry Rexroth is so evasive, he's poor poet with big ego, but he dug them nonetheless. I've showed them to anyone around here I liked, Peter, Sheila, etc. and reactions have been very strong. “Joan Rawshanks” is by the way a local myth around N. Beach now. Rexroth without my knowing had read aloud long parts of
Visions
to several people including Duncan (who is now in Majorca) and keeps quoting Duncan's reaction—“As Katherine Mansfield said when she read
Ulysses
, this is obviously the wave of the future, I'm glad I'm dying of tuberculosis.”

I'm not sure still that Rexroth is absolutely exhausted as a prospect. If you have an extra copy of
On the Road
or
Subterraneans
, have them or you send it to me, I'll try him with those. Maybe it's wasted effort maybe not. Meanwhile I'll return the
Visions
and
Sax
as soon as I hear from you where you want them sent. I have plenty of stamps around, and will send them insured, etc.

Edmund Wilson still a good idea.

[ . . . ]

If you have second or early version of
On Road
he's not circulating send it here yes? Might as well use every possible copy at once for every possibility.

I'll also return Buddha
SF Blues
which have been at my side for some time. I typed out passages of it and submitted it to a mag called
Voices
which had asked me for poetry (used to be edited by [Louis] Simpson) and they returned them and my poetry too. Well phooey. I enclosed the few sections I typed up, I just picked them at random. To show you I typed them up. They did take one short poem of mine, imitation of my sister's date-talk.

Herman Hesse has a novel called
Siddhartha
about a Buddha disciple, I read it last nite, nowhere particular. Still struggling thru Surangama. I can't finish it and keep turning aside to read things like [William Carlos] Williams' book of essays new published, Pound's
Translations from Chinese
odes, collected poems by Laura Riding,
History of Surrealist Painting
, [D. H.] Lawrence poems, [Aldous] Huxley's book on peyote (which has only one interesting thing—a description of a Cézanne he saw when hi)—(from memory)—“weird peasant goblin face leering from the wall of the page, leering out, a self portrait.”

I have a great three speed piccolo I paid 40$ for second hand and one album of Bach
B Minor Mass
which I listen to every nite before sleep. I write hardly nothing, but I do write strangely.

Well that's just silly doodle. I am out of debt here and now just when I'm beginning to save money for Europe etc. I've been fired. As of May 1, I'm being replaced by an IBM mechanical brain, the whole office is closing. I may be asked to stay on another month or two or be invited to New York at same salary $350 per month, but maybe not. So now I have half year at $30 a week unemployment as my due. I don't know what to do. There's nobody here but Peter and Neal I like, SF is empty and I'm ready to take off and collect my 30 per in L.A. perhaps and dig LA. But I've got to work for Europe money perhaps, or should go to Shool? School? (
Shool
is synagogue)—Well send me some advice as to what to do. I won't know definitely till May 1 what gives with job here. Assuming I take off four or five months I will try to finish collection of poems which I haven't and can't without more love leisure whatever, in time—I mean I look to actually assemble it all in form when am free,—I am at the moment confused what I'll do. No able makeup mind.

Bill writes, he asked what your address was, no answer from you. I had told him to keep writing to NYC address, but will now send him 1131 Raleigh.

My brother wrote me that he received
New Writing
—which I have not been able yet to find in SF—and had been in Rocky Mount in Easter and had written you asking if you wanted a ride or your mother did, down there, but no reply except that you sent him
New Writing
. Thank you for being sweet to him. He seems responsive in a Gene [way].

He also wrote that Carl Solomon is in Building 22, Ward 3, Pilgrim State Hospital, L.I., New York, same as my mother. Carl's mother called Gene and said Carl asked me to write, I wrote yesterday. What'll happen to Carl in time?

Send me new
Bowery Blues
anyway.

Sublette working as waiter under Mew at Fisherman's Wharf—Sabellas restaurant, junking occasionally, drinking oft. I see him, he stops by semi-daily, but now except for Neal who's always welcome and Peter I can talk to no one and wish to be alone to read and write. Neal still with his girl Natalie, he has my key and brings redhead here to fuck, she beat, keeps hanging around to talk to me I can't stand it (tho she's a hip redhead frantic lost days), but I'm too weak to listen to lost talk, too tahred tahred.

Williams' prose in
Collected Essays
very like yours. When and if I finish what I am doing if he's still alive he'll amaze. Have been out of touch with him since NY.

Write me what you will do perhaps we can do something together.

New address instead of office 1010 Montgomery St., S.F.

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Rocky Mount, North Carolina] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

May 3, 1955

 

Dear Allen:

Please send all the manuscripts to me care/of this address soon as convenient.

Tell Neal I dig and everything is okay.

How come Bill doesn't answer my handwritten letter sent via you in February?—can you re-check on that.

Giroux has asked to see my B-works and so I want all my manuscripts now.

Sincerely,

Jean

 

The wild classic sentence in
New World
didn't come from
On Road
but from
Visions of N.

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., Rocky Mount, North Carolina?]

ca.
May 10, 1955

 

Dear Jack:

I'm sending two packs of manuscript first class registered and insured to Raleigh Road, they're wrapped, I take them to P.O. tomorrow. Sorry I couldn't get anything done. Rexroth reviewed
New Writing
over the FM station here where he gives Saturday weekly book programs and spent most of his time talking about you as one of the greatest writers of the day, etc. I didn't hear the program but heard about it, he said you wrote like Céline and Genet. At any rate he reviewed the issue and gave “Jazz” most of his time. I gave Sublette the copy you sent me, it's not out here. Neal has his own, already worn and cumed-on, I wandered upstairs where he was with Natalie and he was naked and blasting and on floor by ashtray was thumbed-cover bent back copy, he'd been reading it, aloud.

He arrived here the other morning in Nash station wagon with his typewriter and clothes—he and Carolyn separated, now he has a room with phone for RR calls in North Beach, living with Natalie (the redhead I mentioned in earlier Polk Gulch letter). He's been out a few days, says he'll do nothing but fuck and play chess, left his typewriter with Peter, to type on, told me to wire you now here we
both
are in town rush right out. This is not the year of Great Ball however, though Neal is very demonstrative, still full of energy, I play my Bach partitas and he rolls stick, vainly, imitating unaccompanied violinist at same time, can't hardly get the green out of tube when the violin screeches, he throws arm up wildly scraping bow on string, he tries to lick paper, violin begins extended chaconne which leaves him thrashing on the floor (like Bill) scraping the bow wider and wider as the notes come out of phone longer and longer, balancing still his stick above head, playing with his feet finally to get the stick rolled, can't make it, Heifitz comes to a climax, he spills the T (but catches it with other hand) rising exhausted out of the floor to get the last high notes scraping the wall. Today he came in to tell me his address at 8 AM as I was leaving for first trip to unemployment office (and sat in nearby park waiting it open in piss park, dogs and old ladies and gents hurrying waving arms running down grass to busses to downtown, yellow morning I saw over Twin Peaks, now I'm at leisure, I wander lonely, through early morning in SF, waiting,) and Neal raised his chin and my hand to it, on neck, rubbing—“Am I full of sores there? my neck?” But no, just red from shaving, why did he ask? Just that, unexplainable intimacies.

He went to see Hugh Lynn (son of) Cayce at local conference, and talked to him four hours. Came out saying everything was fine, fine, everything's being solved just like I told you that guy Cayce, you just got to work on it, your Karma, now Cayce he's working off his Karma too just like the rest of us—he's quiet, I think he's queer too, it's his Karma we spent four hours talking, and I told him about T and masturbating and Carolyn and you (me)
et
you got to see him myself (and I did go one night, too late). Carolyn also went, but didn't get interviewed by Cayce self, but by one of the women, workers, and was given ten minutes and asked “Please, yes, That's it, don't say anything, I mean, just—shut—be—quiet, bear your Karma, I mean just don't SAY A THING,”
a la
the man who married a dumb wife.

The Cayce interview seemed to set basis for the separation, which followed in a week, by mutual agreement, try out, says Neal.

What your plans? I have now extra big desk, reading Corbiere and Buddha and Pound, slowly rehabilitating my heart to write. [William Carlos] Williams coming out here next week. Corbiere by the way is a Lucienesque Breton who writes about Breton coast.

[ . . . ]

I have now a small panel truck, and can sleep (cramped) in back, go riding on Calif cliffs and to woods. Kingsland (John) is flying out here for a week's vacation visit—he arrives day after tomorrow—I'll put him up—he wrote and asked—and take him riding around. I like to look at the sea, nature, lately—no one to talk to otherwise.

Love,

Allen.

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Rocky Mount, North Carolina] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

May 11, 1955

 

Dear Allen:

Just an additional letter to go with the enclosed clipping and to let you know what I was thinking in the yard. I don't think you should be discouraged by the neglect you are receiving from publishers and poets and publics and fellow Jews. This is classic. The Jews have finally taken hold in America, like a well ripened plant, and the 20th century in America is a big thing in their general history; they have great national importance and international stature thru their Americana, their Amurica. It is only fitting that there should be a great Jewish Bard hidden among them, unknown, neglected, obscure, poor, sad, classically Jewish (Ginsberg), classically learned, gentle, cultured, and classically pure as a writer of poems. It's most important for you to realize that it is inherent, the Jews are bound to neglect their own best Ginsberg Jesus; the prophet is without honor; it is classically a Jewish thing, due to fact, that Jew-ism is a materialistic bigcity hard boiled hardminded ism and the high fine cultured poet is like their finest silver, under the napkins under everything else hidden in the mahogany commode, not to be tampered with, tempered, mixed. It is also classic, plus your name, that you be Spy Rosenberg martyr-faced, your clean collar, clean middleclass look, glasses,
shool
humility, when you wore your black mustache you looked like the classic sad cultured Chaplin . . . (with also romantic Fredric March
Trade Winds
Joseph Conrad aura of mystery). I can just see it, the Jewish National Hero will be you, a hundred years from now or earlier, Ginsberg will be the name, like Einstein in Science, that the Jews will bring up when they claim pride in Poetry. They certainly can't say Shapiro or Schwartz, these absurd piddlers with words. Everything you've done as you say, in your later writings, to my mind, is valuable. Because original. Your earlier works were imitations of tradition and had little value. I know this as I dig thru my things and look at your letters and poems of 1943, 1944, etc. though some of them were beautiful and will be well worth saving. But everything that has come later, starting I'd say with the Sketching, or, the wildcity, the Harlem Vision, I just can't remember where, when it started, the poems that you began to write I think around 1949 or was it 1951 or 1952 when you began to use the first word that came to your head and sometimes words like “Amurica” (O that's from Williams?)—I mean, I remember Lamantia remarking about a funny unpoetic-like remark . . . the new poetry that you write, free, which now has become a classic style in the beautiful Airplane Poems of last December. Whenever a true writer gets original, he can't do wrong any more. Like Bill. Also, the classic thing about you, also, is your very great, superior learning, tremendous sharpness, true ignuhood, ariya, elect, your unerring eye finding out not only Burroughs and me but Neal and the greats, the Joanses, Hunkeys, Corsos, rejecting the Simpsonses, Hoffmanses, Holmeses, Harringtons, Temkos, who will be nothings compared to even the lowest ravings of Neal or myself . . . I know and realize that there are other writers in this country who think a lot of themselves and exchange letters like this predicting their great future fame—but I'm not whistling in no dark, I haven't seen anything yet, I'm not unmindful of what Giroux said of me in 1950 and what Auden said of Bill nor am I fooled by the great silence that always falls when your name is mentioned among poets and writers. Besides why should we care, if we're whistling in the dark and we're not “great” writers, then it will only mean that tastes and standards will change into Apocalypse which is our message anyway. Bill with malicious humour, you with voice eerie rock, Neal with babble stone story,—Your classic learning, your tremendous experience finding the ignus, your all-knowing range, your huge notoriety, your low (like rivers of valleys) hidden position, with a father who probably thinks you can't write poetry—Paste this in your hat, Ginsberg is the great poet of the Jews of the 20th Century in America and his position among Americans is commensurate with the extent of the importance of the position of the Jews themselves, naturally. When I heard your sad idealistic voice on an old wire recording of you, at Holmes' last year, I cried realizing this but hadn't figured it all out. I thought you were dead and we had lost our priceless high finery, which we'd taken for a turd while it was there, which is the classic situation. Like Lucien saying, “I can't think of anyone more disreputable than Kerouac.” We're beggars.—Don't think I'll come to California, no money, no reason, write anyway and we'll thrash it out plans, etc. Davalos in Hollywood gives you good in there, maybe. Ginsberg in Hollywood.