Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (57 page)

 

 

Interruption, Allen Speaking—no, not heard from Frechtman yet. What was Gregory's letter to WCW like? and your visit to him? Where's Sublette in jail alas now? See Chase before he left, or did anybody see him? We sent Juan [Joan Haverty] her letter you sent us, and this her reply enclosed as I say in my letter formal. By all means pick up that great LaVigne picture of Peter, keep it for us, or lay it on Whalen. What New Haven poet man??? Was this John Wieners of Boston? Tell Whalen to send, definitely, manuscript of poesy to Wieners—he has address—for
MEASURE
. Am sending Wieners some Burroughs too. This a long range little mag deal, like
Black Mountain
, with same personnel practically and Olson and WCW blessing. He wrote me today asking for material and wanted to know where Lamantia was, and also Whalen and Snyder, said he received something he liked from [Sterling] Lord, of yours, and would publish it. (received “ten pages of the Book”) (I assume it's
Book of Blues
). Tell also, for Whalen to give the “Green Auto”, which I sent him, to Grieg for
New Editions
, if he can't or hasn't given it to
Berkeley Review
. Elise writes that the girls are all three headed for Frisco soon. What happen with Lucien when you saw him? (his name is now out of my book). Fuck Baldwin, Corso, Frechtmen, Wyse for their inhospitality, I hope they all do better by me.

OK signing off again,

Love,

Allen

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Berkeley, California] to
Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, William S. Burroughs, and
Alan Ansen [Madrid, Spain]

June 7, 1957

 

Dear Allen and Peter and Bill and Monsieur Ansen:

Well, first, Allen, I got the divorce papers you nicely sent, had them notarized, signed, mailed registered mail, with all kindsa receipts to prove, and so I hope now I'll be left alone in peace so's I can build me that hut for solitude . . . And I revealed my presence on West Coast but said I was en route to Florida or Mexico or someplace (in case of big tricks to trap me) . . . mwee hee hee ha ha . . . I did not ever think I shouldn't pay you that $225 because you'd waste it, tell Bill to stop presupposing his own thoughts in my mirror, I only just don't have it but wait till October when big things will be popping in NY with publication of
On the Road
and maybe pocketbook offer and movie options and excerpts etc. so you ought definitely get it ere Xmas, don't worry. As for Neal: yes, Peter, he fine but he borrowed ten dollars off me saying his children were hungry and then I had to go to Frisco one month later and trap him at his train but he only shoveled up two bucks and kept talking all the time. He's just as mad as ever, cunthappy, but I got a big letter from his wife saying I was a bad influence on him because he was making progress in trying to change to the better things, she says (she defines Dharma as the right way, tho it really means “the meaning”). So Neal persuades me to spend the night in No. Beach and line up some babes, I spent overnight with one gal, but she was a dyke I'm afraid. I met the magnificent Hubert Leslie who is just like DuPeru (who I saw also, he still the same) and Hubert in fact is even coming to visit me at my house in Berkeley (imagine Hube the Cube and my mother in the same room!) Hube is a great painter, he used butter on his last work, he really is not so dumb, he knows PLASTICITY of painting even if he uses shit for his browns, that's as it should be). Also Leonard Hull and Doris are two very great people, Doris is Hube's “mother” etc. and they have big mad friends who come around and tiazurpen with big neezzeedles . . . However, first, let me report on
Howl.
The whole (case) thing was put down and laughed at in Washington by big hep customs inspector lawyers or whatever, so the local dumb Irish cops rushed up on their own initiative and bought
Howl
in the store and arrested the nice Jap cat who was instantly bailed out by Civil Liberties Union but I went there and there were no more
Howls
on the shelf. Ferling was out of town and will show up soon to go thru formality of arrest and bail out. It's disgusting—what's worse is even some intellectuals are saying it's too dirty, I have a hunch the intelligentsia of America is really so gutless they might knuckle under the dumb fat Irish cops in time and it'll be like Germany, a police state. I'm really worried and Bill [Burroughs] was always right. However Rexroth is burning and there are some who won't be gutless so Allen do not worry. Write a big poem called “Wail” beginning “Wail for the cripples of Morocco crawling on their bellies in the Socco Chico, Wail for the homeless Arab boys sleeping on tables by the sea with their heads in their hands, WAIL for etc. etc.” a big super World Fellaheen
Howl
instead of just dumb Amurica hepsters. Wail for the boyos with their Catch Mohammed pants!—Wail for the outraged American Queers throwing dirty pictures to the wind!—Wail for the seven foot pederasts leading small boys up the hall!—Allen, I just wrote a mad poem and sent it to John Wieners, yes Whalen and I sent him a big mad letter with Corso, him and me poems, and Gary [Snyder] too, all's set, we're all accepted and to be published in the next three issues: My poem went: “Pulling off the human drawers of girls! / Leaving whole pussywillows unblown! / Because I'm a breathless tree!” which I read to Ronny Lowensohn [Loewinsohn] the other night in Place. Mike Grieg of New Editions is publishing my “Neal And The Three Stooges” in this issue, shall I mail him your “Green Auto” now? It's at Phil [Whalen]'s round the corner. It was turned down by prissy jealous Berkeley high school boys. Tell Ansen I'll be seeing him within a year anyhow as, if I make loot this fall, I'll meet you all in Paris and go to Venice. I can't get over Paris and it was greater than you'll ever dream in advance!—so I'll meet you there within a year or two . . . Allen G., that is so mad, so mad, Allen, that line “Ansen worked on the manuscript (of Bill's) like a great professional pedantic scholar with an unruly library full of dignified ancient manuscripts of the Venerable Bill” (!)—Gregory wrote a big letter to Williams last March or April asking for money saying you and I were loaded but he was poor but somehow it came out sounding like a con organized by us. Yes, you should pick up on Ullman's offer and Florence is a gas. As to my recent work: poems and some prose, trying to write a huge novel call'd
Avalokitesvara
but at the last benny sitting it bogged down in metaphysical discussions . . . however I painted The Vision of the Goatherds, which is red shepherds looking at a creamy cross in the heavens, with swirling blue clouds around, and also painted (on peotl at ?'s cottage) more mad flowers exploding out of a (black) pot, and one painting of the yard that I dragged thru the grass like a mad bohemian modern (which I'm not) and painted Smerdyakov
¹²⁴
in the Garden (nowhere) and painted another flower and painted a girl in bed and finally a chalk of Mary and Joseph but I ain't even started yet. O yes, a perfect drawing of Whalen sitting crosslegs with his pipe, called Buddha Red Ears, or did I tell you all this?

Allen, meanwhile there are big rumors around town here that you were seen several times on the street and in The Place, as tho you were Hitler and nobody wants to believe that you're really “dead”. Also you were “seen” in New York even and everywhere I go I'm introduced as “that guy that
Howl
is dedicated to!” (you rat!) [?] So anyway
Howl
was cleared in Immigrations Customs Court or whatever (let Whalen explain details) but now local police step in. Write to Frechtman for God's sake, show to someone else if he don't like it, like Cocteau or Genet himself. Al S. [Sublette] is in jail for shoplifting, he will be freed in thirty days for good. My visit to Gregory was a big story in itself. Yes I will pick up the LaVigne painting of Peter, wanta study it. “New Haven Poet man” was John Wieners (he has already bugged Sterling Lord with his “illiterate” letters). Gary sent Phil Whalen big Buddha robes—also, Gary's sister is in Mill Valley and I am going to latch on. Send Wieners your and Bill's material and Pete's too and he wants snapshots too, he's open to everything. I think he would be better for “Green Auto” because I think
New Editions
is square. When I saw Lucien he wasn't drinking any more, quiet, had to quit, I drank, got drunk, he was very friendly and nice and I told him whole story of everybody and he laughed. In Paris latch on to American girls at Bonaparte Cafe near the Deux Magots Cafe near the church St. Germain de Pres, better than men like [James] Baldwin etc. they have loot and wanta be loved, that's how Gregory makes it, but try to live in Montmartre only half hour hike. London nowhere, don't ever even go there, except unless you want to strangle bobbies in the fog. Try to go thru Aix and Arles too, and don't miss Louvre, don't miss anything . . . (you won't) . . . wish I was with you. Now that my mother all settled and happy I feel like becoming happy too—but the three girls are arriving soon (Joyce, Elise, Carol) and Neal all blowing hot and big season to begin. New poet on scene, little incunabular Burroughs with glasses called Dave Whitaker . . . (seventeen). Send me instructions about “Green Auto”, whether for Grieg or for Wieners. I hear there's a picture of you and Gregory and Laff in new issue of
Esquire
(for July) and that dumb Rexroth article is in
New World Writing
no. 11 where I'm “in his small way” peer of Céline and Beckett.
Esquire
has turned down what we offered them after a big hasselous lunch where they wanted to stare at me the pricks . . . I should have shoved my prick in their mouth, that's what they really want . . . I will write big separate letter to Pete now but also for everybody to read.

Ti Jean

 

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Orlando, Florida] to
Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Alan Ansen [Venice, Italy]

July 21, 1957

 

Dear Allen and Peter and Alan:

Finally re-settled my mother for good in nice pad here in Orlando, which has my own room—cost me hundreds of dollars and's left me destitute but all is set, she says she never wants to leave here and cheap rent of $45 she can make it herself, on her social security monthly checks—so tomorrow I leave this heat wave horror for cool plateau of Mexico City where I will arrive with $33 and must write despairing letters to Malcolm Cowley and agent for money. If Garver is dead, and my rooftop room is taken, I'll go to 7 peso-per-day Hotel Solin where Esperanza liveth and buy candles and holy weed and alcohol burner and potatoes and write second half of
Desolation Angels
. Allen, crafty Cowley wants me to write more childhood scenes for
Doctor Sax
and deliver them by Oct. 1st and I suspect he will yank fantasy out of it without my permission, as he yanked much out of
On the Road
(review copies of which are out) (
On the Road
undecimateable, unlike
Sax
) without my permission or even sight of galley proofs! Oh shame! shame on American Business! So I may get
Sax
publish't as is by Mike Grieg for the record (free) and let Viking fuck
Sax
? You are very famous now, Allen, incidentally I will be getting money this fall undoubtedly and will send you cashier's check for $225 before Xmas I hope. Reprint people ought to take
Road
any week, it's only 305 pages as published hard cover. Wild book, by the way—(first Dostoevskyan pure novel in America).
Evergreen Review
No. 2 is also great, “Howl”, “Railroad Earth”, good Gary, McClure, everybody blowing, nice cover. Elise [Cowen] came to Frisco mysteriously, Joyce [Glassman] in N.Y. wondering where I am, has $500 to travel. Rather be poor than bugged. Received your Angel postcards of Spain. If all goes as it should, I ought to meet you all in Paris in May. Have to explain
Beat
for
Harper's
or
Saturday Review
, big article, by Aug. 15th. LuAnne [Henderson] and Neal and Al Hinkle floated into my Berkeley door
just
as I was unpacking boxful of
On The Roads
from Viking, all got high reading, LuAnne wanted to fuck me that next night, Ow, had to leave (bus tickets). Saw Stanley Gould and Al Sublette in one mad night that exhausted and scared Elise. Tell Gregory I wrote him letter but where mail it? Lafcadio brooding in N.Y.
Desolation Angels
all scattered. Is Bill alright? Will you see him in Paris? does he know I love him? (I mean, in my letters, I never mention him affectionately). Shall I have Viking mail you copy of
Road
?—don't be bugged by what Cowley wanted put in, on page six or so, about “intellectualism” of you and Bill and Joan [Burroughs] as against Neal's hard-on hungry purity. Cowley thinks I'm Simple Simon, I'm a fool alright. Who will really justify us shits?

Peter, I didn't get that LaVigne painting, no time. Peter, write a mad story, Mike Grieg wants to publish my “hidden geniuses”—you, Jack Fitzgerald, Hunkey, Laff, etc. in his
New Editions
. How about a nice essay on Portuguese Baroque by Sr. Alan Ansen? Don Allen came to Frisco with Jonathan Williams, Whalen doesn't like him much (he's contemptuous of so many things including my way of writing, say “
On the Road ought
to be a good book, the Viking editors spent three years revising it”)—and Rexroth saying at big get-together, “We who have power with publishers” like, they're all getting hungup on the power poetry gives, not poetry itself. Rexroth says
Road
is great and sent me message saying so. Even Mark Schorer tried to reach me. Anyway, spending all my money
before
I get rich so now I can make me fine pad in Mex City and come home winters, all's finally settled. Now for Panama Street.
¹²⁵
Write to me care of here till I send you Mex address. I'll write long letter soon to all of you. Are you going to file for Guggenheim now, deadline Oct. 1st? I will. Gary coming to Calif. within months, it seems, on freighter. Well, end of sheet.