Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (61 page)

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Orlando, Florida] to
Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France]

November 30, 1957

 

Dear Allen:

Your poem very beautiful, especially “eyes of Ma Rainey dying in an ambulance.” (why don't you spell it “aumbulance” which would mean aumvehicle . . .) . . . well, and Greg's “sweetlys in sun-arch” indeed amazing . . . I'm very drunk as I write this, forgive, I too have a thousand new poems but I'm tired and too tired to send you some . . . later. I'm going to NY in three weeks to appear twice a night at Village Vanguard nightclub to read my prose, starting with
Road
and later I'll stick in
Visions
and
Pomes
. . . at plenty money a week I'll do it and if this doesn't make me a drunk, nothing ever will . . . actually I look skeptically towards this adventure but the money is necessary. Holly[wood] ain't buying my book probably at all, Brando is a shit, doesn't answer letter from greatest writer in America and he's only a piddling king's clown of the stage, I bugged, so your $225 I'll send as soon as I can probably December or January when I get royalties, don't worry, and it'll be your return fare security anyway. Like you paid my way over to the other shore, I'll pay your way back. Without movie sales I really only have not much more than
T & C
[
The Town and the City
] loot, which is a shame. You guys were all het up about nothing. I be bhikku till day I die. But I hope to meet producers et al as nightclub performer and I will come on like a cool SOUND MUSICIAN like Miles Davis and not drink too much I hope. I'll be living at Henri Cru's pad which is 307 West 113th St. in three weeks. [Paul] Carroll at
Chicago Review
askt me send him stuff, I sent “Lucien Midnight” poems (new ones you didn't see, wrote em last night in fact) and other poems. Jay Laughlin is going to do a selected edition of
Visions of Neal
, maybe one hundred pages, of best prose, in fancy $7.50 thin volume private edition, he says to begin with, is very nice and polite in letters and sent me little brochure of his really most excellent poems. He's very good poet. I am afraid of this coming New York trip but I was getting fat and bored down here. I'll probably end up in the Bowery this trip but as Esperanza used to say I DUNT CARE. No, Gregory, I won't go cry on Lucien's floor, Lucien makes me laugh happily. Lucien is my brother. I'll this time find Laff and take him under my tutelage when he hits town. With loot from Vanguard I'll buy oils and paint more holy pictures of Virgin Mary my mother. and your mother, mother. I am vast endless nakedheaded giant cloud making no sense even to members of the nut ward, what a fate for a simple footballplayer! I got a nutward letter from a certain B. Zemble and am sending him back a spontaneous poem so crazy Gregory would flip over it, in which I say “science statement is million years over owned by pens as treacherous as Aga Arnold of Good Day Biddy Father Uptown—see? I'm a fool! I love reverse! I got hidden Moo-Flutes in my horn cow. I did it dad because I dood it money—I am Governor President!”—etc. and it ends with “My conscience is all snow. In fact my conscience is coldspot.”

In other words I have discovered Gregory's secret because I'm so smart and crazy. But I don't care. I'm rather good novelist now, my in-progress work is
The Dharma Bums
about Gary [Snyder] and 1955 and 56 in Berkeley and Mill Valley and is really bettern
On the Road
, if I can only stay sober enuf to finish it now that I know I'm going to make big fool of myself with evil Gilbert Millsteins in New Yoik. If I can swing the sale of
Road
to movies, on this jaunt, Brando may come dig me in nightclub, I'll make a trust fund and disappear on Zen Lunacy Road and you can all join me. That's my purpose in this blear deed. “All of Medieval Europe in a Shakespeare inch,” I wrote last night, where says: “Poor perdu! thin helm!” Wow. Also I'm reading
Don Quixote
which is probably most sublime work of any man ever lived, thank God for Spain! All living creatures are
Don Quixote
of course, since living is illusion. Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ha ha aha ah woeieield.!”k3738♯%♯”($& So I'll send your money soon, All, don't worry,
Alle, ubers ober
and did you get the letter I sent you to mail to Burroughs a month ago? Well, I'll write later. I am bugged and sad and mad and writing a great novel,
The Dharma Bums
, wow, wait'll they read that one! How great Gary is in it, and Whalen . . . you'll see. Meanwhile all I gotta say is: We're all going to die. Neal don't write. Neal great. Neal says “Ha! I shall now succumb to victory” as he plays chess with me, satirizing where I'd said to him I let him win chess games because I a bodhisattva . . . I wrote great play about Neal, too, which was mentioned in
Herald Trib
and now four producers reading it, but it's woefully short, but that's all right you sweet daddies please pray that I can join you in Paris in April because I want to embrace you, poor perdus. Well, this is John the Roi saying, Don't step on the candy gal.

Joh Perdu

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France] to
Jack Kerouac [New York, New York]

December 5, 1957

 

Dear Jack:

Got high on junk last night and thought of you, said to myself we must—now we are famous—not get drawn apart by varying fames or worlds but get closer in unfamous solitudes brothers, I am just adding this as extra to Petey's letter so do not expand but will write big letter I thought about your writings, again. Yes Brando must be a shit it's too long he's not got in touch ever with us anyway and makes bad movies now a pitiful karma. Ferlinghetti sent me $100 yesterday so we eat I paid Gregory's 20 dollar back rent and he's moved in with us temporarily and we bought Genet and Apollinaire dirty book and a paper of junk and a matchbox of bad kief and a huge quart expensive bottle of perpetual maggi seasoning-soy sauce. Ah, that Village Vanguard sounds maybe blear, they won't listen to you, I wish we were there to raise spirits of audience and stir them up as you did for us in SF, but maybe it will be alright—you should do it like a saint to talk to them even if humiliating, maybe it will be but a ball though—good luck and don't drink too much and be not unhappy with NYC. It would be a beauty to see, you sound lonely facing NY, I wish we were there comrades in that madness. No rush about $224 now, Grove Press will publish seventeen page Mexican “Xbalba” poem and pay me this month probably, and I still got $35 from Feldman-Citadel Beat Generation anthology (I guess you know all about) (for reprint
Howl
) and also more money coming in from City Lights—you realize by miracle I've got (in addition to two hundred free copies) so far 200 dollars from them? You'll make a little loot like that for
Blues
if they print. So send the money when you have it I have not been at all bugged or anything (you mention it often I thought you thought I was impatient) and had not expected it till after New Years. News of
Visions of Neal
is great, that is the great prose marvel, what will they select and why only one hundred pages? Perhaps later hope for Burroughs in same way. Olympia rejected manuscript. City Lites eager to see Burroughs also. Don Allen taking too long. Bill writes he's expanding into huge formal structure accidentally—the present manuscript will have to be fitted into the cracks of the new leviathan conception—hundreds of pages of that done already he says—and will be in Paris after New Year.
Partisan Review
took two poems by Gregory now after big mad letter from us—should get them to pre-publish passages from
Visions of Neal
before ND [New Directions] comes out with it. They also took two poems of Levertov—the plague is on (as we wrote them). Letter from Holmes he comes here Xmas. And Parkinson unseen yet in town yestidy. Yestiddy. Peter and Gregory paint a lot, Peter strange red angels in red trees, Gregory make this week sparkly abstracts on our wall on canvas-paper. I shy, so don't dare touch brush—so also same reason write so little, but I'm getting over it I think, I hope, I feel ashamed write so poor and little now. Doleful. I feel ashamed as a pear. Is G. Millstein evil except that he's full of NY? His review brought tears. Van Doren you remember always hung on
Don Q
., and I hung on last pages when he “wakes” up. I mailed your letter to Burroughs, he not written you? I don't think I come home yet awhile but stay on here six months in Paris and then perhaps with you and Bill in spring journey eastward—first I want Moscow if can, after circumnavigate globe. I want to have a big vision before I return in U.S. Come Paris soon if you can honey. I thought last nite you only write well (aside from the prose) about those you love imaginarily—Bill, Lucien, Neal, Huncke, your father—I mean those who are your fathers, who hit you in the nose and not about us who kiss your feet (me and Peter for now)—what you do with Phil and Gary—with big sad depth 3-D details about them and not rush thru incidents too fast as in
Desolation
. Perhaps you not paint me Peter in detail then for fear of offending us (with what you see)—but I rather be writ in tragical detail than kist in passing as giddy kid. But it's exhausting to write. Beautiful young back-street Rue Huchette bar here with runaway high school existential boys seventeen and their fifteen year old girlfriends nobody got 40 francs for a glass of wine, we took Ansen there, to look at boys with shoulder long hair and D'Artagnan beards. Peter be in NYC in a month or so we hope and will see you in Vanguard with Laff maybe. Love, stay with us, I repeating in answer I felt your letters said that too.

Allen

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Orlando, Florida] to Allen Ginsberg,
Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso [Paris, France]

December 10, 1957

 

Dear Allen and Peter and Gregory:

Just got your wonderful letters today and haven't even had time to re-read and digest them but I want to leap up and answer right away with blah blah blahs . . . Wanta tell you, I just finished writing my shining new novel
The Dharma Bums
all about Gary [Snyder], the real woodsy vision of Gary, not surrealistic romantic vision, my own puremind trueself Ti Jean Lowell woods vision of Gary, not what you guys will like particularly, actually, tho there's a lot of Zen Lunacy throughout and what's best: all the tremendous details and poems and outcries of
The Dharma Bums
at last gathered together in a rushing narrative on a one hundred foot scroll. So I wrote Cowley and told him, and if Cowley don't want publish it, someone else will, as it's like
On the Road
, real muscular prose. But when
Subterraneans
comes out February I'll be so proud that a real sweet poem of mine is finally out, and the next drive is for:
Doctor Sax
. On
Subterraneans
manuscript I labored days undoing the wreckage of Don Allen's commas and dumb changes . . . so it's now as original, shiny, rhythmic, bespeaking future literatures by great young kids. May I say, Peter's poems about red footprint in snow is real great poetry, I now pronounce Peter Orlovsky a great American Surrealistic Poet of the First Magnitude. Peter, I hope you do come back to New York within a month and as I say I'll be at Henri Cru's but be SURE NOT TO COME THERE! Henri has laid down a strict law with me that I can stay there PROVIDING none of my friends call, so just telephone me there, and we'll make our meets wherever we want, Fugazzy's, Helen Elliott's, Joyce's, anywhere, in fact Peter why don't you take up with Joyce Glassman at her new address 338 E. 13, where she has full huge pad with big kitchen and all where you can stay because I want to make it with Helen W[eaver]. I just wrote big letter to Laff telling him I'll see him. Yes, Al, I know reading will be fiasco-ish but I think I'll make them vibrate just so's I can be held over an extra two weeks and send you your money and also set some aside for my own triumphal visit to Paris (bleak, meet on the street) in March where I'll rush up and find Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso, Orlovsky, Ansen and Cocteau all in one bed of rocks I was going to say Roses, I mean all in one stew, I mean all at one time, besides Gallimard has just bought
On the Road
and advanced me francs and it will be published in French in Paris 1958 so now Genet and I have same publisher. Frankly, last two months, I haven't been interested in anything but peace. You know what Christ said when he entered a house “I bring you my peace,” or, leaving, “I leave you my peace.” That is the greatest kick of all. Just sit all day doing nothing, enjoying cats and flowers and birds. My swift finger in writing poetry is swiftfinger but Gregory you're right, beauty is slow, but you see, if you don't speak now your own blurt way you may forever hold your tongue, this was Shakespeare's law, how do you think he wrote so fast and so much and so sublime? The hawthorn sleet of Lear fool and the dancing fool and Edgar in the moor, was all fast wild thoughts. O, I've pissed more water as a sailor of the several seas than sallow's aphorism will allow, and had I written slowly and deliberately, might you call me Sallow then. Aphoristic Lionel Trilling deliberating like Henry James over his imaginary sentence structures. Poetry is Ode to the West Wind! ? Wake Up Poetry is Shakespeare and nobody but Shakespeare and don't Pound me no Tolstoy me broach me no rejoinder! Shakespeare is a vast continent, Shelley is a village. Why do you insist, Gregory, on being DIFFERENT and choosing unlikely Shelley for your hero, why do you be afraid of being like everybody else and admitting the Supreme Greatness of Bard Will Shakespeare? How, ask Burroughs about Shakespeare, he spent years with the Immortal Bard on his lap . . . Burroughs in fact bespeaks himself like Shakespeare. Listen to Burroughs talk. Don't be fooled by Mighty Burroughs. Gregory, you are about to come in contact with the greatest writer alive in the world today, William Seward Burroughs, who also says that Shakespeare is the end. Apollinaire is a veritable cow's turd in a meadow in the continent of Shakespeare. The greatest French poet is Rabelais. The greatest Russian poet is Dostoevsky. The greatest Italian poet is Corso. The greatest German poet is probably Spengler for all I goddam know. The greatest Spanish poet is of course Cervantes. The greatest American poet is Kerouac. The greatest Israeli poet is Ginsberg. The greatest Eskimo poet is Lord Bleaky Igloogloo. The greatest Burroughsian poet is World. Well, boys, I'll be seeing you in March in Paris and don't flog your dummies, and save some girls for me, and some harry, and don't upset the tables, and don't worry, I don't give a shit what I saw, when I sawyeouek what I sawk woue and that's that. I'm drunk. You can see I'm writing this letter drunk. Okay. Tell Alan Ansen to go to that queer bar on the same street as Cafe Napoleon about five blocks down where they all sit around listening to classical jukebox sipping coffee and vermouth, I went there with Irish motorcyclist from Dublin. Or is Ansen yearning for long haired youths from nature boy caves? Poor Ansen? Bless his eyes, kiss his eyes for me! Hello Ansen! Hello Burroughs! Hello out there you mothers! How are you? Hello Allen! Eyes of Ma Rainey dying in an ambulance! There are sweetlies in sun-arc! the little purple women monsters are straddling the sun! The black cowboy! The cottage without bacon! Hello Peter Brother, how are you son, kiss the ground you walk on! Hello all you Franciscans! Hello out there! have another cognac! Hello you miserables . . . end of magnificent message, end of blah hoard, see you all in Paradise Paris in March when we'll light the torch of saint.