The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats

by Allen Ginsberg

  I used Carl in a sense, or abused Carl, by dedicating my poem “Howl: For Carl Solomon” to him. That’s been a burden to him because it typecasts him in a way which he is not. The line in “Howl” is “who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy.” Well, that was Carl. I used poetic license, in that he attended Brooklyn College, it wasn’t CCNY, but the rest is true.

  Solomon’s books are not very well known. He’s the author of two very elegant books of rare prose, Mishaps Perhaps and its sequel, More Mishaps, both published by City Lights. His education is very sophisticated in both political left splinter group ideology and history, where he has an amazing memory going back to the forties, and also in French letters of the twentieth century, especially in the period of dada and surrealist activity. He has a curious style actually, pretty intelligent. He was the person who turned me on to Antonin Artaud. Carl had the first copy of Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, which was published in English and imported illegally back in 1950.

  Carl is an intelligent writer from the point of view of using a certain high-class literary tone derived from French dadaists and surrealist manifestos. He has a French rationalism taken to a paranoiac critical excess. Paranoiac critical method was the phrase that Salvador Dalí used for his own style, a kind of black humor probably. Carl also has a few intelligent remarks about Antonin Artaud whom he saw in Paris. He is a Rimbaud type, that is visionary, but one who stumbled over his nose earlier than Rimbaud and immediately gave up writing, and then went on to write little tiny things about having given up writing. Solomon wrote with disdain for all writers, a kind of mockery of the whole ego ambition game that he saw in my antics or Kerouac’s or Burroughs’s. In him you get a genuine lunatic’s-eye view of the best minds destroyed by madness. A genuine critic of the shallowness of my line from somebody who actually was in the hospital.

  Carl has been an intimate of almost all the poets and writers of the Beat Generation up to the present. In the early fifties he worked for his uncle the publisher A. A. Wyn at Ace Books and it was Carl who got them to agree to publish Burroughs’s Junkie. Even with that we had quite a bit of trouble because Carl had to go through a barrier. His uncle was worried about it because in those days to be taking a realistic side in the matter of drugs was counter to all the philosophy of the Treasury Department G-men and narcs. To cover themselves, Ace published two books in one, Junkie and a volume by a narcotics agent, Maurice Helbrant. In addition to that, they interpolated a number of editorial comments, like when Burroughs says it is possible for junkies to stabilize their habits and lead normal lives if they can get a medical supply, they inserted a note saying, “This is not the opinion of recognized medical authorities.”

  Carl managed to give Kerouac a contract and an advance for On the Road on the basis of some very complex prose from Visions of Cody. As an editor, Solomon was actually very innovative and had prescient foresight. When Kerouac turned in On the Road on that giant scroll of UP teletype paper, he brought the original manuscript to Carl. It had already been rejected by Robert Giroux, the eminent publisher, who could not recognize the totally innovative prose. Carl was shocked, as we all were, by the form and content of the scroll.

  Faced with this explosion of interesting literature and composition from Kerouac, Solomon could do nothing with it. At the same time Burroughs was following up his Junkie, not with a nice little John O’Hara–style, Hemingway-style book but with a manuscript so indescribably obscene and awful that it wasn’t published for thirty years. He called it simply Queer. Carl had to follow Junkie with all this new literature, and naturally who wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown? This fits in with Carl’s essays on Artaud and the problem of identity for the dadaists and the surrealists and those people who wanted to alter reality, the post-Rimbaud visionary seers who wanted to alter reality. Carl had started on that literary track but then found himself without any identity at all.

  Carl’s conscious decision after being institutionalized with amnesia was, “I have a small mind and I mean to use it.” The point there was for him to take some job which was absolutely Zen-like ordinary. So selling ice cream or being a messenger was the most average ordinary basic-reality, physical job you could find and that became his career.

  CHAPTER 49

  Kerouac’s “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose”

  [In conclusion] I’d like to point out Kerouac’s earliest statement of his method of writing, thirty aphorisms which he applied to his work. He was asked to do a summary on how to write for Don Allen and so he wrote a list of essentials called “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” They are one-line slogans or one-line exhortations for prose writers. It was subtitled “a list of essentials” and was published in Jack’s book Heaven and Other Poems.234 The first is:

  1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

  Just write for yourself and your gods, rather than for the market. I think this was written after he finished Visions of Cody and all his books had been rejected. On the Road had been rejected and Cody was rejected, so he wrote more than a dozen novels between 1950 and 1957, when On the Road came out. His first book to be published was called The Town and the City, a traditional novel about a family, brothers and sisters, and their move from the small town to the big city. Then the breakup of the family and the effect of urbanization on the old-fashioned nuclear family.

  2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

  I would say that when he sat at his desk he made himself submissive to his own mind. His recollections are focused on a subject. Basically, what he would do was to figure out what was interesting to write about, whether it was The Subterraneans or The Dharma Bums or a high school romance or the bogeyman hero of adolescence like Doctor Sax. Then he’d make an outline of that in his mind or on a piece of paper, the main topics, that he wanted to cover. And then like a jazz player he would improvise on those points. He was submissive to everything, recollecting everything, and then beginning to write. Trying to write the stream of his mind. Not so much stream of consciousness, which in literary terms is very random, but focus on a single subject and all the associations of that.

  3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

  This concerns his own very real drinking problem.

  4. Be in love with yr life

  That’s something that most people are not. He’s saying take your own life as sacred, that way everything comes out artistic.

  5. Something that you feel will find its own form

  You don’t have to have the form in advance if you know the beginning, middle, and end. If there is something that is occupying you, as say the character of Dean Moriarty occupied Kerouac, or Cody, or Burroughs, or any of the people he knew, you ruminate on that and begin writing without knowing how to finish. The work will find its own form.

  6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

  Which is to say don’t be professorial, you’re not going to be like those nice novelists in the New York Times. Exhaust the subtleties of your personal mind, just say that’s me thinking of my childhood fantasies, my first loves, my first vacation in Africa. Use personal details, be coherent, explain to other people. Everybody has their own secret life, their own humiliations and triumphs, their own adolescent fantasies and crushes. If one person can exhibit his own soul in that way, other people will find it, relate to it. You have it in Whitman, in Huckleberry Finn, you have it in Sherwood Anderson. You have it especially in Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” or “The Cask of Amontillado,” no one in America has such a lucid mind as Poe. Poe was a big influence on Kerouac.

  7. Blow as deep as you want to blow

  In some of his best sketches he does that.

  8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

/>   9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

  10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

  That’s a good one. What you really see, what you really think, from your personal mind.

  11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

  I think this one is because he was writing on Benzedrine, amphetamine, so there was some shivering from that.

  12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

  Focus on what you see and write it down as Kerouac did in those sketches like the old teacup or the movie theater.

  13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

  You can begin a new thought without worrying about finishing the old one.

  14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

  This is my favorite, like an old marijuana smoker of time, a sophisticated raconteur of one’s own consciousness.

  15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

  16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

  I guess, the mind’s eye, inside.

  17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

  You know, amaze yourself.

  18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

  By “pithy middle eye out” Kerouac means the pith of the statement or the vision or the epiphany or the moment of recollection that’s the most intense that you begin with. Start with the first vivid recollection that recurs in the mind and then work out from there. Start from that jewel center of interest. Whatever comes up in your mouth, gargle it out. Take the sentences and put in all the details.

  19. Accept loss forever

  Which was Kerouac’s realization that life itself was a kind of golden ash. That we were all phantoms in the sense that everything would be gone in a hundred years, we’re just a bunch of phantoms. Everything will be lost including our own thoughts.

  20. Believe in the holy contour of life

  In the sense that his writing is a kind of prayer or devotion, devotional or sacred activity, recollecting the events, looking through the keyhole of his eyes at eternity.

  21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

  You can’t write everything in your mind, only what your pen is fast enough to pick up and what your mind is capable of recollecting in the flood of thoughts. Write whatever rises naturally and in whatever sequence and order thoughts rise, and as quickly and in as few words as possible.

  22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better

  This is a very, very important point. It is real practical technical advice to writers. If you visualize or revisualize your memory, look at the picture, then words come from that very easily. If you lose track of the picture, the actual, visible, palpable event you’re recollecting, then you are groundless in space trying to reassociate an old word line instead having the words relate to some substantive picture that other words can connect with. Usually when you’re writing you stop when you lose track of what you’re thinking, or you lose track of your subject. This is how you get back on to the subject, you go back to your original picture.

  23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

  In other words, be conscious of the drama of every day. Kerouac woke up every day and put the date there, realized it was Thursday, then realized he was alive, and kept track of his day-by-day adventure. He felt you should be in love with your life.

  24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

  There is nothing to be ashamed of in your own experiences, or language, or knowledge. If you’re gay you can write about that, or if you’re arthritic you can write about that. So shitting in your pants is a sacred act, instead of being something to be ashamed of. This is a complete reversal of the usual attitude, that you’re basically wrong, or that you’re stupid, even when you are mistaken.

  25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

  He’s saying that there is an outer world that’s also being satisfied by writing.

  26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

  If you’re recollecting your childhood, try to see it as a bookmovie, a movie in words, as a basic American form. Kerouac saw his fictions, his novels, as films, scenes that flash onto the camera eye of the recording angel, Kerouac.

  27. In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman loneliness

  That’s like saying we know that there’s nothing to be gained in the end but death. Jack was interested in his character’s individual consciousness and awareness.

  28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

  29. You’re a Genius all the time

  In other words, trust your own mind.

  30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

  The angel is the one who pays for the movie.

  Works Cited Within the Text

  Note: Classic works are listed by title and author only without reference to a particular edition.

  Allen, Donald M., ed. The New American Poetry 1945–1960. New York: Grove Press, 1960.

  Aronowitz, Alfred G. “The Beat Generation, Parts 1–12.” New York Post (March 9–22, 1959).

  Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and Experience

  Burroughs, William S. Junkie. New York: Ace Books, 1953.

  ———. Junky. New York: Penguin, 1997.

  ———. The Naked Lunch. Paris: Olympia Press, 1959.

  ———. Nova Express. New York: Grove Press, 1964.

  ———. Queer. New York: Viking, 1985.

  ———. The Ticket That Exploded. New York: Grove Press, 1967.

  ———, and Allen Ginsberg. The Yage Letters. San Francisco: City Lights, 1963.

  ———, and Brion Gysin. The Exterminator. San Francisco: Auerhahn Press, 1960.

  ———, and Jack Kerouac. And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. New York: Grove Press, 2008.

  Céline, Louis-Ferdinand. Journey to the End of the Night

  Cocteau, Jean. Opium

  Corso, Gregory. Gasoline / Vestal Lady on Brattle. San Francisco: City Lights, 1976.

  ———. The Happy Birthday of Death. New York: New Directions, 1960.

  ———. Mindfield. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1989.

  Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot

  ———. The Possessed

  ———. The Raw Youth

  Fields, Rick. How the Swans Came to the Lake. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Press, 1981.

  Gifford, Barry, and Lawrence Lee. Jack’s Book. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978.

  Ginsberg, Allen. Collected Poems 1947–1997. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

  ———. “A Definition of Beat Generation,” Friction, vol. 1, no. 2/3 (Winter 1982).

  ———. Empty Mirror. New York: Totem/Corinth, 1961.

  ———. The Gates of Wrath. Bolinas, CA: Grey Fox Press, 1972.

  ———, and Neal Cassady. As Ever. Berkeley, CA: Creative Arts Books, 1977.

  ———, and Peter Orlovsky. Straight Hearts’ Delight. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1980.

  Holmes, John Clellon. Go. New York: Scribner’s, 1952.

  ———. The Horn. New York: Random House, 1958.

  ———. “This Is the Beat Generation,” New York Times magazine (November 16, 1952).

  Huncke, Herbert. The Evening Sun Turned Crimson. Cherry Valley, New York: Cherry Valley Editions, 1980.

  ———. Huncke’s Journal. New York: Poets Press, 1965.

  Kafka, Franz. The Castle

  ———. The Trial

  Kerouac, Jack. Book of Dreams. San Francisco: City Lights, 1961.

  ———. The Dharma Bums.
New York: Viking, 1958.

  ———. Doctor Sax. New York: Grove Press, 1959.

  ———. “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose,” Black Mountain Review (Autumn 1957).

  ———. Heaven and Other Poems. San Francisco: Grey Fox, 1977.

  [———.] Jean-Louis. “Jazz of the Beat Generation,” New World Writing (New York: New American Library, 1955).

  ———. [Letter], Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, no. 8 (1978).

  ———. Lonesome Traveler. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.

  ———. Maggie Cassidy. New York: Avon, 1959.

  ———. Mexico City Blues. New York: Grove Press, 1959.

  ———. Old Angel Midnight. UK: Booklegger, 1973.

  ———. On the Road. New York: Viking, 1957.

  ———. “Origins of the Beat Generation,” Playboy, vol. 6, no. 6 (June 1959).

  ———. Scattered Poems. San Francisco: City Lights, 1971.

  ———. The Sea Is My Brother. New York: Da Capo Press, 2011.

  ———. The Subterraneans. New York: Grove Press, 1958.

  ———. The Town and the City. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950.

  ———. Vanity of Duluoz. New York: Coward-McCann, 1968.

  ———. Visions of Cody. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972.

  ———. Visions of Gerard. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963.

  Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity

  Mailer, Norman. The White Negro. San Francisco: City Lights, 1960.

  Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor

  ———. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

  O’Neil, Paul. “The Only Rebellion Around,” Life, vol. 47, no. 22 (November 30, 1959).

  Orlovsky, Peter. Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs. San Francisco: City Lights, 1978.

  Perse, Saint-John. Anabasis: A Poem (translated by T. S. Eliot). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949.

  Podhoretz, Norman. “The Know-Nothing Bohemians,” Partisan Review, no. 25 (Spring 1958).