Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  Neal says he won’t go, on account of job, and promises to Carolyn. But there is still some hope. You write him asking again maybe. He has to settle new job—nothing’s happened yet, maybe nothing will—waiting on SP action, maybe they won’t even take any.

  Gregory wrote his great poem, a great great final poem called “Power.” Extremely funny—and it all means something, hangs together about eight pages so far long, still in making—read aloud (with tape) for first time two nites ago at Gui’s house, Hubert, me, Pete, Lamantia, Gui there, all knocked out—good great poem, like Howl. And in town that week, Randall Jarrell, poet and in residence at Library of Congress, so I meet Jarrell and offend him at Witt-Diamant’s house,119 offend his wife mostly, by drunk arguing silly, then party several nites later at Parkinson’s in Berkeley for Jarrell, which Whalen, Gregory, Hubert, Peter, and I crash, Temko is also there, we corner Jarrell, make him sit down on floor with us in the middle of the crowd of silent professors, Gregory begins yakketing, “are you really a fascist like Rexroth told me??” . . . Shelley . . . little Gregory . . . Jarrell gets all hung up with us, party half forgotten—after awhile he gets up to say goodnight to professors and Gregory sits down on couch with Jarrell’s wife holding her hand, charming, I recite a poem of Gregory’s to her as she goes to ladies room upstairs . . . goodnight . . . then Witt Diamant calls Gregory two days later, the Jarrells want to see him, take him out to dinner . . . he goes, with “Power” under his arm he declares himself a vegetarian, so he has to eat eggs and lettuce while they’re swilling wine and crabs and lobster soon he’s holding hands with them and skipping down the street from Fisherman’s Wharf . . . they want to adopt him . . . Jarrell had read his book at Diamant’s house, thought it was great . . . if he needs any money just write to them . . . Jarrell will review his book, better, write an introduction to the next one . . . he must visit them and stay with them in Washington . . . he is a great poet . . . if he wants to go to Europe, Jarrell will help him get a grant from Guggenheim . . . come to Washington and record for Library of Congress. The whole works. Insane. So now Gregory has finished this great “Power” poem, has publisher in Ferlinghetti, backing from Jarrell, promise of money, fame etc. Imagine, just like that, in days days. He hipped Jarrell to your work also, he’ll look it up. He doesn’t like Howl too much, alas, I guess I really bugged him, but that’s alright, I got W.C.W. [William Carlos Williams] and I want to go back to anonymous anyway. But just think for little Gregory, what windfall of fortunate love. Too much. Even [Michael] McClure, sidled up to me at Duncan’s reading (literary mystical I couldn’t understand it) and asked where he could get in touch with Gregory. Ah, gold, honey, I haven’t lost my way.

  Well I am out here with Whalen for the rest of the month, retired. I go to S.F. October 21 to give a reading on same platform with Gregory, both of us together, the final reading in SF, Gregory with great “Power” to unveil that nite, the audience will go mad. I’ll read big queer poem, maybe. Then I’ll leave maybe the 23rd for L.A. to see my relatives. Maybe with Gregory. Peter will work thru the 1st November and join us there. Then we’ll all go to you in D.F. This is the tentative plan. So: You can expect us definitely by October 7—at 212 Orizaba. Look around see if there’s someplace we can all live for a few weeks—hurray, in Mexico together at last! What have you found out about boat fares from Vera Cruz? Wait, this is my plan after Mexico—I have to go back East for a month to see my parents anyway, visit my brother, see Lucien, Village, etc. I want to and must. So I will take ship from NYC, since I know for sure you can get a boat for 160 or less from there. But there is also the strong possibility of legal workaways, on foreign ships, which will save the carfare for me and Peter, maybe you if you want to, tho carfare saving is not so important, just a minor detail. If you want not to have to hang around, but would like to leave directly from Mexico, then find out about Vera Cruz or elsewhere and I’ll get $$ and you go on ahead of us and see Bill, or get him to Paris, or do what you like. We can settle this when we get there—to D.F.

  Ark is out, they’ll send you ten copies probably, the dazzling obscure parade and etc. . . . is Shakespeare like you say.

  Heard from your mother yet?

  Yes we will be careful of Tangier. I hear from Bill, he’s still off junk, still waiting, expects us by January at least and can wait he says, expects us all and sounds pleased.

  No more waiting we all go to heaven by boat this Xmas or sooner.

  So . . . glad, happy, you will come to Europe . . . will also portion out money in advance so there be no money hassles and dependencies, everybody to be free to goof on their own, no strings just ball around . . . if I dole it out in small amounts we’ll all goof each other unhappily, I know me, by now. So don’t worry nothing about Europe. Also Gregory will get us all fellowships and grants and awards.

  Peter wants to make your Rosa. We’ve also balled Ruth Weiss together, finally, I screw dog, her, and she kneeling blows Peter, then we change around. She shy at first but after awhile we all began goofing happily with our cocks and cunts and everybody woke up pleased.

  So you have my precise plans . . . answer soon, are you there I mean still there? I sorry not wrote earlier directly but I been hanging around in SF without day to day plan, expecting to return to cottage to write and finally did.

  [ . . . ]

  Love

  Allen

  Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico] to

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

  Oct 10 ’56

  Dear Allen:

  The literary news is that Grove will want Subterraneans for their first issue or Evergreen Review (a quarterly) this winter, at 1¢ a word, and it’s about 50,000 words so $500—money for Paris—but Sterling Lord is disappointed because Don Allen won’t do hardcover of it first—and I’m disappointed because Don Allen wants to meld Doc Sax with Gerard “to make a good book” as tho Sax wasn’t by itself a chef d’ouevres. Further, I’m completing the second and final part of Tristessa now, it will be, together with last year’s rather light touch, now, a big sad novel. I no longer blast to write, benny is better. My prose now is very choppy and terse and funny to the point and painful—no flowery—so first flowery part of Tristessa take care of flowers.

  I lost a whole new book of beautiful poems to Fellaheen thieves, they were better than Mexico City Blues too. Maybe you and Peter and Gregory and Creeley can help me recover them? We can bring baseball bats and knives and rocks in our pockets. It’s disappointing, I don’t feel like writing any more poems—Agh.

  How’d Mademoiselle pictures come out?120

  Get a picture of mine at Walter Lehrman’s or somebody and show to Life photographer so I can be in Life too.

  I should have stayed at Peter’s instead of coming here because Garver is awful and I feel terrible here. Only good thing is, I started to paint—I use house paint mixed with glue, I use brush and fingertip both, in a few years I can be topflight painter if I want—maybe then I can sell paintings and buy a piano and compose music too—for life is a bore.

  Jack

  Editors’ Note: As planned, the group reconvened in Mexico City following a reading in Los Angeles by Ginsberg and Corso. After a brief stay in the city, Allen, Jack, Peter, and Lafcadio headed back to the United States via car, while Corso awaited an airplane ticket to Washington, D.C., where he intended to live with Randall Jarrell for a while.

  Jack Kerouac [Orlando, Florida] to

  Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]

  December 26, 1956

  Dec 26

  1219 Yates Ave.

  Orlando, Fla.

  Dear Al:

  Far from sending you the $6 I owe you, I’ve already asked [Sterling] Lord to lend me and send me $40 for my return trip with the manuscript because of Merry Xmas I had down here buying turkeys and whiskey for everybody and presents. Also, I don’t know where those passport photos went, so I’ll have to apply for my passport around Jan. 8 and so, three weeks from then will be Jan.
29 which oughta be just a hairline under our sailing date so I guess we’ll make it.

  In Washington Gregory said he would sail with us on the same ship . . . But he thought Paris was a port so when I told him we were sailing to Le Havre or Marseilles or Gibraltar he got mad and said he’d take a ship to Paris by himself because he doesn’t want to ride beat trains overland to Sura . . .

  We had a ball in Washington, I wrote the Washington blues in Randall’s living room while he and Greg went out to yak at some psychiatrist . . . Jarrell is a big kind Merims types and very sweet man indeed . . . The first night I arrived me and Gregory started to paint an oil on canvas together then G. went mad and said, “Stop, let me do this myself, I’VE GOT IT,” and he proceeds to bash and smash at the canvas with big popping tubes of every color . . . the next day we have a surrealistic city . . . next night I take big tubes and paint a huge frightful Dr. Jekyll face, and also a surrealistic cat . . . which I gave Jarrell as a gift, he wanted it . . . then I drew his beautiful daughter (stepdaughter) Alleyne Garton . . . who sorta loves me and G both. We raced around in a Mercedes Benz, bought $10 Xmas trees, visited zoo, antique shops, etc. G. got bugged at me because I was bored with his goddam antique shoppes . . . but he felt better when I left. I drank up all the family whiskey and left high, rushing off with big Washington hipsters into alleys and almost missing my bus and losing my rucksack with all manuscript and paintings and gear . . . but God is good and got it back for me. Randall gave me as a swap for the huge long coat, a huge long leather coat with fur collar, a red sharp sweater and a sharp hep cap for Paris . . . but even this new coat is much too heavy for the world . . . don’t know what to do.

  In my Berkeley Blues I found this haiku: “Flowers / aim crookedly / at the straight death”, which I think is better than “heavy rain driving into the sea” . . . and the reason you never mentioned it was because you secretly hoarded it up for your crooked flower poem without remembering where you saw it. But you know what I think, while I gave you “America,” which you finally dug from Visions of Neal type America, you actually gave me Visions of Neal type prose, it was not only from Neal’s letter but from your wild racing crazy jumping don’t care letters that all that sketching came out, it broke me off from American formalism a la Wolfe. So we all learn from one another and wail along but my God too much is being written by too many people even good writers, mountains of useless literature are rising all over the modern world and whole unnumberable hordes of not-yet-born writers in the womb of time’ll come and raise the mountain higher yet, a pile of pure shit, to reach the masquey stars of Neal, till Céline piss, Rabelais laugh . . . ough. And everybody in NY so involved in IMPOSSIBILE multiplicity reads fast like Howard and really doesn’t care and doesn’t look or listen, it’s just one vast excited over-excited ulcer all this. ’S why I don’t know, I think my Some of the Dharma exceeds my other books because it is mindful of this problem of stupid multiplicity and blind raging wordage.

  Anyway I wrote to John Holmes and arranged for our later visit in January so you’ll be hearing from him. Gregory wants to go to [William Carlos] Williams’ with us, so wait for me too, make it after Jan. 8th so I can meet Williams. I can now use Jarrell’s name for fellowships so find out about fellowships, Guggenheim is too hard, find out about others, if you have time in all that nervous madness there.

  I’ve made the arrangements for my mother to move after I leave, and for further little monies for Europe, minus the fare . . . that is, do you still intend to pay my fare? Otherwise I won’t be able to go, because that’s her moving bill. By Autumn I’ll have money to repay you, make it a loan, I already owe you $40 from last spring, lend me the fare now, and next Xmas I’ll give you $200 in all, when by that time my mother’ll be ensconced in Long Island and I’ll have her monthly S.S. checks. Okay? But if not okay let me know. Besides I haven’t signed those contracts yet and something might go wrong. Moneywise it will all come back to you from me, don’t worry about that aspect, Jarrell said I’d be rich. More anon, another letter, longer, but shoot me one meanwhile.

  Jack

  1957

  Editors’ Note: In mid-February, Kerouac sailed for Morocco to visit Burroughs and help him put together the manuscript of Naked Lunch. Ginsberg and Orlovsky followed in late March, meeting up with Jack in Tangier. Corso decided to head directly for Paris, where he hoped to renew his relationship with his old girlfriend Hope Savage, whom he called Sura, but she was eager to see India and left soon after Gregory’s arrival in the city. Kerouac, tired of life in Morocco, set out from there for Paris, only to find that he wasn’t welcome to stay with Gregory or any of the other acquaintances he had there, and after a brief stop in London he headed home. No sooner was he back in the U.S. than he and his mother, Gabrielle, decided that they’d move to Berkeley.

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

  and William S. Burroughs [n.p., Tangier, Morocco?]

  ca. late April-early May 1957

  c/o Whalen

  Dear Allen and Bill:

  Yes the manuscript safe in the hands of Frechtman in Paris. When I left he hadn’t yet read it. Writing you this from Joyce [Glassman]’s pad in NY preparing to move out [to California] with my mother, only waiting to see if Neal agrees, if not, bus. The 4th class packet is nowhere, never take it, take it 3rd class, I had to scrounge around for my food like a stowaway, woulda starved without my camp pots, slept on burlap mattress, among soldiers and Arabs, no blanket even, and had to have my camp pots filled by surly cooks in the kitchen. Tried to hitch hike from Aix en Provence to north, no rides, no good hitching in Europe. However dug the Cezanne country and also Arles, tell you more later. Paris bugged me because no rooms and no fine American friends could let me sleep on their floor, Mason Hoffenberg could’ve but didn’t want, Gregory was nix because of his landlady, spent five furious days digging everything on foot then went to London and pickt up advance, bought boat ticket, dug all London too, including performance of St. Matthew Passion in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and saw Seymour [Wyse] who is at 33 Kingsmill . . . Last I heard of Gregory he was at Hotel des Ecoles, Rue Sorbonne, Paris. He got me drunk and made me spend most of my money the first night, ’s why I had to leave Paris so soon. Paris better than I dreamed, great, unbelievable, Allen you will love it . . . but do NOT live in St. Germain Montparnasse, go instead to old Montmartre where it’s cheaper, children’s carousels in the street, artists, beater artists, working class district . . . (not fashionable now, the idiot Americans all sit in Montparnasse cafes as if they didn’t get enuf of that in the Remo and The Place ugh). So live in Montmartre when you get there. Don’t miss the Louvre, I saw it all there . . . voluminous notes on the pictures I saw, in my diary. In Paris even Frechtman wouldn’t let me sleep on (apartment) floor . . . as a result, all I got were one-night hotel rooms, kicked out in morning, spent most of time sight-seeing Paris with full pack on back, sometimes in hail rain and snow. But really loved it and this whole trip, now I’m back in NY, I see as having been worth it, worth the money spent and the hassles. Now I’m in touch with Whalen and ready to go out there. Latest news: in this week’s Publishers Weekly [April 29, 1957] a long paragraph about Howl banned, and invitation to editors and writers to contribute to the fight against the ban, the court trial coming up.121 Nothing wrong will come of it, and anyway American edition will then sell like hotcakes. I hear Viking is excited about On the Road, expect it to be a bestseller (old story, hey?).

  Bad news is that Joan [Haverty] is after me with the cops again already, they think I’m in Europe still (I hope they didn’t check boat lists) and are about to clamp on my source of income at Sterling Lord’s and attach it, etc. just as I’m struggling to move Ma to coast. What I’ll do is order a blood test in a few months and settle it once for all. That bitch, and I was feeling so good because no lushing and happy thoughts of concentrating all attention on Duluoz legend, damn her, she’s like a snake snapping at my heels. She got some doctor to prove that she co
uldn’t work and support her child, because of TB. She made sneaky calls to Sterling who dug her right away without my telling him and kept mum. So what I’ll do Allen, when I get their roundabout letters, is answer them, mail the letter to you to mail from Casablanca, as tho I was there.

  And how is the deal in Casa, any jobs? Is Bill with you? Peter? Is Peter’s cure working? Saw Elyse [Elise Cowen] who misses you so much, almost cried, told her what I could. Even Seymour dint put me up in London because of some cunt in there who hated me, I’m gettin to be like Burroughs. Seymour still slim and boyish but strangely unemotional, tho as we were strolling through Regent Park one evening and I told him he didn’t have to be fooled every second (by false mind) he let out a shout of recognition. He’s alright but England not good for him, nothing but drear there. Anyway good contact for you in London. Go to the Mapleton Hotel in London and get a “cubicle” room, cheapest possible (Mapleton and Coventry Street). In Paris, Montmartre. Be sure to dig the Cezanne country which looks (anyway in spring) exactly like paintings, and Arles, too, the restless afternoon cypress, yellow tulips in window boxes, amazing.