Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  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.

  “there’s nobody here

  to talk to.”

  San Francisco house

  April 12, 1955.

  Slam of Neal’s car door

  outside my shade

  at twilight. Great

  art learned

  in desolation.

  An empty ashtray.

  Think another line

  . . . .

  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.

  Write—Mail my manuscripts.106

  Jack

  Jack Kerouac [Rocky Mount, North Carolina] to

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

  May 20, 1955

  Dear Allen:

  Well today I wrapped up a 10,000 word short story called “cityCityCITY” and sent it to Cowley asking him to figure someplace to send it and recommend it too if he wants and suddenly in a P.S. I admitted I’d been a fool early 1953 refusing to publish On the Road with him . . . Allen do you realize if I had published then, by now I’d have been in the money all this time, would have traveled to Europe, Tangiers and maybe India or even China and Japan and would have probably published Sax and also written great new works obtaining from inspirations of travel. Now I suppose Cowley may laugh at me . . . I suppose he figures I’m big underground martyr hero ready to spend life unpublished like Grieg and Tashcaikowksy, crying in the dark . . . Suddenly the past two days I been watchin ants in the garden, their dry villages, their familiar dry travails in the grit, and it seems to me I have reached the point beyond Enlightenment now and can abandon Buddhism now because Buddhism is an arbitrary conception. I mean, in reality, there is no difference between Ignorance and Enlightenment, they are both different forms of the same thing which is that unknowable unpredictable shining suchness as I say . . . a girl’s ass is the same as nothing, life is the same as death, practicing discipline is the same as riot, what’s the use of torturing your form? The mind-system cannot stop, the Lankavatara admits it, the habit, the seed-energy of mind cannot end, therefore there is no way to stop the mind-system as long as you “live” and therefore no way to rid yourself, or obliterate, the “external” world and therefore there is no reason for conceptions of enlightenment and paths and Tathagatas or conceptions of any kind. Your X essence is as it is, the Tathagata is the Attainer-of-X but it is a mental attainment and still the Tathagata dies of dysentery shitting imaginary shit . . . mindshit all of it is mindshit . . . I know that do and don’t are the same thing, I know I can stay right here in this lonely cottonfield and do nothing the rest of my life, or suh around and do a million things, it be the same thing . . . As far as I’m concerned now the truth isn’t worth a shit. So I think I’ll just do anyway, take Krishna’s advice . . . now that I know the truth and that it isn’t worth a shit what’s the difference whether I do or don’t? right.

  Sure I’d like to come out to the Coast, right now, eat chow mein, drink wine, blast with Neal etc. but have not the money. Think what I’ll do is come out there and get a job running a typewriter in Frisco or perhaps baggage room of railroad (anything but railroad braking which I hate because I don’t understand how do it).

  If so, do I get to stay on your couch till I get paid and start fixin up my own room?

  Also, I have an idea it would be good to show Subterraneans to Rexroth. It is the first of the “hip” novels and he might go for it, or else sneer at it like Alene [Lee] and Anton [Rosenberg].

  That Sterling Lord who calls himself my agent hasn’t even written to me, in three weeks or more, I have sent countless panicky requests for word, it started when he
said Giroux wanted to see me and my Buddhy manuscript so I write big letter to Giroux and apparently both are bugged by something in it. I asked for a thirty day limit on the reading of the manuscript but does that sound like something to be bugged about? What does it mean when a business agent doesn’t reply to you at all as if he was like dead? Can you assay guess? He wasn’t pleased by you and Sax but what’s the matter now? So I wrote and told him if he wasn’t innerested in my books to forget about them and send them back EVEN THEN NO ANSWER. As Bill says, a deliberate affront. I am flipping like Bill, like Carl, I must run up to NY within a week and see what’s wrong. Please please please the other night I dreamed I was suddenly taken with a convulsion in front of two men in the “synagogue library” and became screaming and flopping like maniac epileptic and they were not surprised nor frightened but merely interestedly awed by calm to see a real maniac and yet as I screamed inside of me there was that essential calm compassionating out to them, I remember, I was screaming and finally my face paralyzed in a contorted position and still I remember my calm eyes sad for them their fear . . . what does this dream mean? does it mean I am a maniac? If I don’t get published soon I think I will go into a fit like this and be a lunatic—that’s how orldgirl deshepishe ei feel, I feel real awful, these guys in NY are really killing me at last . . . please do something . . . pray for me, something . . . I want to kill myself . . . my family doesn’t even want me to get drunk any more . . . I’m really a wretched paper pauepr paoeori like I said. I will write to Carl. Please let me know once and for all if you forwarded my letter to Bill last February. I sent him “cityCityCITY”, no answer.