by Jack Kerouac
I have been translating rare works written in French and translated from the Tibetaine, the Mahayana Samgraha of Asanga, a great saint scholar of first century, and have a whole lifetime of translating ahead of me, of works done by Great Rimbarvian Frenchmen in the abbeys of Tibet, here is an example I done out; “Sentient beings ask themselves: ‘How can the inexistent be perceived?’ To rid them of this hesitation, the Sutra compares dependent nature to magic (Maya) (magie)—” and etc., very easy and great career for me if I feel nothing to do. The Asanga was translated by Abbe Etienne Lamotte. Also I been looking up the secondary Buddhist works, such as Burmese etc. (Ledi Sayadaw) and the Tibetan book of the dead, etc., all about hallucinations, fantasies, etc. and I find generally that the scholars are merely secondary to the emotional geniuses of the sutra-writings. For instance, I believe the greatest writer in the history of the world, wrote the Surangama Sutra, without doubt, but we don’t even have his name any more. But secondary scholarships, like this here that I translated, “If the object were really an object, the knowledge exempt from concept would not be born; without this knowledge, the state of Buddha could not be acquired.” (Mahayanasamgraha) is hungup on words etc.
[ . . . ]
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., New York, New York?]
Feb 14 1955
Dear Jack:
Just got your second letter. I wrote Bill by the way and sent him $20 and will send him a little $$ now and then as I can afford. I owe him about 60 anyway. He sent me a story, which I’ll forward to you presently, about man talking through his asshole. Also some notes on reports he’s read about Englishmen making same mistake in William Tell as he.
Wish you would write him some encouragement re the method he’s using toward prose, what he sends me is interesting like Kafka journals and fragments, he’s worried apparently that the fragmentariness and “disorganization” of material depress him. I write back to let material take own form as it comes. You might advise him same from your knowledge to reassure that this Naked Lunch style from Tangiers is the correct procedure. Rexroth doesn’t like Bill’s work, Belson didn’t nor does Gerd Stern. It will be difficult to promote to others or peddle.
Perhaps a shot of acceptance somewhere would do him good. If you can promote anything through New World Writing see if you can. I think the S.A. letters are the most presentable pack of his writing. He hasn’t put together a complete set of writings since, that’ll take some time. Also he says he has a New Yorker style letter from Tangiers. That would be good for New World, since it will be full of sharp scenes of decay. If you think you can do something to arrange for [Arabelle] Porter to really give it attention, I could send you the manuscript or send it directly to her. I’m not able to get anything for him yet out here except maybe a small magazine short shot.
Shot here is the local language, type-shot (“blood type shot drunk,” says Sublette, returned from sea, out-luciening Lucien.)
Shit on shot.
Rexroth thinks your work is what it is, despite his lack of appreciation of Burroughs, and despite Rexroth being a bullshitter slightly, he’s all right. However he does definitely admire Kerouac, whoever that is now, the most, realizes you’re the wave of the future and would do what he can to promote publication. He advises Laughlin. He showed Visions of Neal to Laughlin and gossiped about all of us to him, and to Auden and writes Cowley discussing you, etc. and says by the way you’re legendary already without having published. Now he advised three things. 1) Probably more action after New World Writing comes out. Wait till then and see manuscripts are shown that week. 2) Definitely contact Edmund Wilson. He’s (according to Rexroth) the only one with any actual power to see that a book get published. Van D. [Doren], Cowley and Trilling, etc. have no practical power in that direction. Wilson is the power behind the throne in the literary world. He wrote Cowley suggesting Cowley get a manuscript to Wilson. You might ask Cowley about that, suggest or promote that, or have me do that if you’re going away, or have your agent do that if he’s able and understands. Rexroth suggested this course repeatedly and thought Wilson would pick up. 3) As to New Directions, that is a possibility. When I receive Sax I’ll give it to Rexroth and have him push it with Laughlin. He’s already advised Laughlin to publish you, and I think needs only a regular complete publishable book to act more on it. That would serve with Sax, Maggie, On the Road, and maybe Subterraneans and later. The three named seem most likely for this purpose. I’m glad you mention sending me Sax. I prefer to start with that, as far as my tastes go. Do definitely have a copy sent me here. Maybe will work out.
I will send you Visions as soon as I have completely read it again, and the poems. No rush, is there?
[Gerd] Stern was “gassed” by Neal’s Joan Anderson [letter].
Crazy Lights is as you prophesied stillborn, the editor is leaving town, has no money to make it. I know my projects seldom materialize but that’s life, I keep trying. One will sooner or later. Junk did anyway.
Well enough of this matters.
Neal has your last big letter so I can’t write you back from that. I tried reading Goddard’s Golden Path and found it too diffuse. I returned the other books and ransacked the library till I came up with a revised (1952) edition of Goddard’s Bible, same as you have, which I took home without checking out—didn’t realize I had done so till I was on the street, I guess it’s mine for awhile.
I read through the Diamond Sutra, which I found a perfect statement. I have marked passages and will note them presently and send them for your notation in relation to me. I was most stuck with use of word “arbitrary.” All conceptions are arbitrary since they are other than suchness, they are conceptions.
The suchness of nothing is what I lack further experience of. Suchness, let us say.
To promote suchness I will endeavor to master Goddard book and practice physical meditation.
Peter O. [Orlovsky] by the way picks up on your letters and the Goddard book and is reading it through with great simple seriousness. I think he has some early stages (compassion) already but not familiar enough with the categories to point to them yet, in this respect. Beside myself, he is the only one I am in contact with who is on, consciously, around here. He also now sits and meditates and gets his weirds there from, seem on right track.
I’m near to exhausting my conception of even the dong. Seems like it can’t be renounced, just used out till it becomes unreal. Even my own cock etc. grows yearly more unreal to me. The more satisfied it is, the nearer detachment. That’s why I pursue.
Your letters are very useful, helpful, don’t think empty effort, since I actually do pay attention to details and whatever signposts are legible, look for them. The more you write about Dhyana, physical meditation, crosslegs, etc. I think the more useful to me—that’s what I need instruction in to develop suchness, that method I think. Also the novelist images of nothing are useful.
I will read Lankavatara next, then Surangama, then begin at beginning of the book.
Burnett’s sweet alright, Anton [Rosenberg] the most cute silent quipper. I don’t know Sherry well enough to use address but thanks, may someday. Get Chase’s address I’ll write him a letter with Neal. Maybe.
There are some Chan documents in French. You can get info on this type scholarship from Alan Watts of the Asia Institute in S.F. There’s a Zen temple in NYC. Phonebook. I went there. Suzuki may be teaching NOW at Columbia. He’s very great. His books are only collections of documents and intelligent in fact uncanny comments on them beside Goddard that I know.
You know by the way Irving Babbitt at Harvard at the turn of century wrote book on Buddha and influenced Eliot, etc. that way, so Eliot studied Sanskrit. And of course the Boston Brahmins, and Transcendentalists, Thoreau, were Buddhists. I think Thoreau or Emerson actually translated some Buddhist scriptures too. A New England tradition.
[ . . . ]
Do you by way remember similar poem of E. Harlem of mine:
“Many seek and never see, anyone can tell them why. O they weep and O they cry and never take until they try unless they try it in their sleep and never some (summon) until they die. I ask many, they ask me. This is a great mystery.”
I’ll write you again soon. I got the idea from letter you were leaving NYC, would you send me your address if leaving now?
Perfect Forest for Bhikku solitude is near Palenque, skirts of unexplored interior Guatemala Peten Rain Forest. Where I stayed at the Shields finca, you can go clear mountain water and solitude and hammock and grasshut for nothing, maybe free food too. When the time comes let me know, I’ll write the Signora, maybe probably in fact surely she’ll set you up a grass hut alone at village outskirt in the midst of forest. Chiapas for Bhikku life best place in Mexico I know, unless you want to be desert Bhikku. Maybe also there are forests on relatively unexplored coast area no highway between Lake Chapala south to Acapulco way. Supposed to be wild country, lonely and not desert.
Love,
Allen
Jack Kerouac [Rocky Mount, North Carolina] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]
March 4, 1955
Dear Allen:
Enclosed is a letter for Bill I want you to mail because I actually cannot afford overseas stamp and anyway write to him. Here is my itinerary.
1. At present in South, babysitting and washing dishes for family, writing great new book already half-finished, about Buddha. WAKE UP
2. In May go to N.Y. and pick up 100 pounds of manuscripts and mother and bring down to here, in truck (brother’s)
3. In July hitch and freight hop to Texas with pack and sleeping bag and sutras, for uninterrupted Samadhis—
4. Two months in desert
5. S.P. Zipper to Frisco in September—Now for Krissakes don’t leave before I get there
6. November back to South via freights
7. Xmas work for Paris and Tangiers $ (for brother-in-law) (for boat and Arab bread)
8. Europe in ’56 (Africa . . . India bus . . . )
I wrote to Cowley. If everything you say is true about Rexroth, etc., please write by letters to Sterling Lord (my agent) and tell him score, I will hip him about you. Has he mailed you Sax yet? I told him to. (All this Cowley talk and never any loot.)
After Buddhist handbook now, I shall write a huge Visions of Bill next, like Visions of Neal (don’t tell him, please remember not to tell him, it will spoil great spontaneous studies of him.)
No typewriter so that ends my big dharma letters for awhile. Some of the Dharma is now over 200 pages and taking shape as a great valuable book in itself. I haven’t even started writing. Visions of Bill will be very wild and greater than Tristram Shandy. I intend to be the greatest writer in the world and then in the name of Buddha I shall convert thousands, maybe millions: “Ye shall be Buddhas, rejoice!”
I’ve realized something utterly strange and yet common, I think I’ve experienced the deep turning about. At present I am completely happy and feel completely free, I love everybody and intend to go on doing so, I know that I am an imaginary blossom and so is my literary life and my literary accomplishments are so many useless imaginary blossoms. Reality isn’t images. But I do things anyhow because I am free from self, free from delusion, free from anger, I love everyone equally, as equally empty and equally coming Buddhas. I have been having long wild samadhis in the ink black woods at midnight on a bit of grass. There is no need for you to go on in a state of ignorant worry and greed for worldly pops,
Later
Jack
See you in Sept.!
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., New York, New York?]
March 13, 1955
Dear Jack:
Enclosed find copy of letter I sent to [Sterling] Lord. Neal is here at 1010 Montgomery St. with Natalie [Jackson] for the weekend. He got beard, two weeks hobo like, sad face, vacation. So they went to L.A. for half a nite, returning with four speeding tickets (and him with his license already pulled) and Carolyn having warned him if he went not to go back (come back), and so they’re here camping on my bed, Peter [Orlovsky] brooding alone in his room, gloomy Russian depressive, me trying to get lazy weekend work reading, so finishing Pound’s newest translation book “The (Chinese) Classic Anthology (poems) defined by Confucius” (edited).
Still in Surangama Sutra, it is hard to read, I don’t follow it though it goes somewhere, there, it works alright but I can’t yet concentrate on the principles. I will keep looking at it till I do. Hard to follow understand. Huge structure, great terrifying structure of signposts. Most penetrating I ever saw.
I will join you to W. Europe in early ’56. I had been thinking I would go that year early. I am in debt here and must keep working longer to raise money for trip. But I should be more or less ready by February or January a year from now.
My pad great, fireplace, long dark bohemia room, rugs all over Turkish, soft armchair to read in, Webcor Victrola three speed I just got from pawnshop, beds, desk and books, Neal and Hinkle all afternoon chess by sunny window on street.
Your ambition is justified.
I have had only a few moments of freedom walking up Monkey [Montgomery] Hill envisioning Telegraph Hill and the bank building as being neither a concept nor not a concept. Diamond Sutra has helped most clear the mind for a few minutes in the past month. I don’t practice Dyhana.
Send me a Word on occasion.
Neal message? “Watch out for all the ripe red rock tomatoes that might show up.” ???
Love,
Allen
Naturally I’ll be here in September definitely.
Jack Kerouac [Rocky Mount, North Carolina] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]
April 20, 1955
April 20
Dear Allen,
What’s the score on the manuscripts?
This is my new permanent address. Have you seen New World Writing and what do you think? Nonetheless BGeneration just been turned down again, by Dutton now.
What’s the news from Frisco? Is that railroad rolling? How’s Al Sublette, how’s shipping?
Now I’m typing up whole new full-length Buddha Tells Us, which is materially (and mostly) a kind of American transcript, American explanation in plain clear words, of the grand and mysterious Surangama Sutra. I dug Suzuki in NY Public Library, and I guarantee you I can do everything he does and better, in intrinsic Dharma teaching by words. Nothin’s happening in NY, was there three weeks ago.
Wrote new poems, Bowery Blues, a la SF Blues but unhigh (no good).
Jack.
P.S. Got no reply from Tangiers in months.
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [Rocky Mount, North Carolina]
April 22, 1955
Dear Jack:
1. Rexroth read Sax and said “he wouldn’t buy it”—“he’ll leave it to some bourgeois publisher to put that out—now if I had 90,000$ to spend I’d publish something like Visions of Neal which nobody would touch otherwise. I liked that better, it’s original etc. but if you want me to use my position to put pressure on Laughlin its gotta be for something that nobody else would publish anyway and someone’s sooner or later going to publish this (Sax). Sounds like it was written on Tea—like those askew spiderwebs on Benzedrine—the sentences are always diffuse, as if he were wandering not driving forward to the point of the book always. No I know it’s great writing, I just have a feeling he’s gone astray somehow, on the wrong track. Now you take Burroughs, he’ll never amount to anything, like Kerouac, but he knows how to write,—though he can’t write anyway—but he tells you straight off and you read thru in a rush and he’s going to one direction, tells you what happened, catches attention and takes you fast.”
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 ac
tion 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.