by Jack Kerouac
Whalen and Rexroth and Ferlinghetti and Spicer making tape recordings for Evergreen, will dub yours and Gary [Snyder]’s in. I got letter from New Haven poet man [John Wieners], having Book of Blues sent to him. “cityCity-CITY” has ended up (unfortunately) free of charge with Mike Grieg in Frisco (New Editions).
Esquire to write piece about you, I hear, and they want a chapter from On the Road.
Joyce is going to get $200 option for her novel from Random and is coming out to Frisco to live awhile, Elise also maybe coming to Frisco with her.
I will see Lucien before I leave. Dumb Don Allen still wants to “improve” Subterranean, this is a secret (says Sterling) we will probably remove it from them and give to MacGregor122 (keep this secret he says) . . . But they did take “October Railroad Earth” UNTOUCHED (!) to go with your poems in Evergreen ♯2 which is good and will make a sensational issue.
I feel gloomy and bugged and Gregory didn’t help in Paris accusing me of gloom and bugginess, we did have one gay day drinking cognac in Luxembourg gardens with big gang of French girls and Irish queers on bikes . . . and that night met all the Paris American hepcats and painters, Baird, and others. I saw Jimmy Baldwin who also wouldn’t let me sleep on his floor. I simply had, was forced to leave Paris, in England the immigrations wouldn’t let me in because they thought I was a bum (with seven shillings left) and suspected my big oriental stamps from Tangiers as me being a spy . . . awful . . . till I show’d them Rexroth’s article in Nation and the inspector beamed because Henry Miller had been to his hometown and written about it (Newhaven, England). So now I’m back, came on the Niew Amsterdamn, don’t ever take a “luxury liner” it’s one big drag, in my jeans among fops, waiters staring at me in the dining room, old freighters are better, food not so sensational after all and who wants to eat at sea . . . cost $190.
Was planning to write you huge happy letter full of news about my trip but this Joan shot has brought me way down to utter gloom again, there’s a subpoena out for me and everythin . . . just like before. How can I ever make it as a Bhikku? Even if I prove it ain’t my baby, the expense, the hassle, having to see her horrible haughty face again, the judge might still make me support the kid because no one else will, then what do I do? Give up writing and bhikkuhood and get a steady job? I’d rather jump off Golden Gate Bridge. And if I run away my mother can hardly make it on $78 a month and they’d come sneaking around for her little pennies even. In which case I end up murdering somebody, guess who. I have a machete too. I’ll take the Prophet’s advice. By their fruits ye shall know them. O God all my crimes have been big gentle crimes of omission and at worst “subterranean sabotage” as Billy says. What would everybody say if I suddenly exploded with a sword of intelligence? Nothing . . . because nothing ever happened. Listen here Bill Burroughs whenever you say that what I say “means nothing” that’s what I mean!
Allen, when you leave Africa, be sure to take lots of cigarettes with you, cigs in France and England cost equivalent of 60 cents a pack and are nowhere. Moment I hit New York I bought tobacco like a madman happily. In Paris, get a stove pad, because food on the street stalls dirt cheap and sensationally delicious . . . pates, cheeses, head cheeses, unbelievable. What beautiful churches I saw, Sacre Coeur on Montmartre butte, Notre Dame, etc. etc. Only thing I didn’t see, go dig, was Eiffel Tower, which I’ll save for you and me, within next five years. Montmartre will call me back . . . and that was where Van Gogh, Cezanne, Rousseau, Lautrec, Seurat and Gauguin were, all together, wheeling their paintings upstreet in wheelbarrows.
And listen here Bill Burroughs whenever I say “I know everything” it is because I know nothing, which amounts to the same thing.
Take it from there.
Write me, Allen, care of Whalen, where I’ll be in ten days or so, . . . love to Peter . . . I waved at you finally from the packet but you and Pete can’t see that far and there you were on the windswept sea wall peering blindly to sea. Love to good old Bill who is a gentle soul I say and fuck all his talk. Meet you all in Heaven.
Jack
Jack Kerouac [Berkeley, California] to
Allen Ginsberg [Tangier, Morocco]
May 17, 1957
1943 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, Calif.
Dear Allen:
Please mail enclosed letter for me to Joan Haverty (Kerouac) in N.Y. who will then send me something to sign in Tangiers for her Porto Rican divorce (she says). A subpoena out for me but everybody thinks I’m in Tangiers still. When you get divorce paper, mail to me in Berkeley—(at my new above address permanent home with my Ma) (a $50-a-month great furnished pad) and I’ll send back to you to mail and that will do it. She says she wants remarry a guy who will adopt kid, says she wants no money just divorce.
Will get my typewriter soon and write you long letter. Neal’s wife mad at me now for being bad influence on him, says at least you had “a motive”—flippy world. Whalen is well. Your name in local gossip columns (Herb Caen), Phil sending you clipping. Bill’s book looks greater and greater. Ansen, I’m so sad I didn’t see you but I had time-problems—We’ll meet again.
Have you heard from Frechtmann?
Don Allen very pleased with “Sather Gate”—and tapes too. W.C. Williams is sore about a big con letter Gregory wrote from Paris asking for personal loan, I saw letter, you didn’t say anything wrong. Any chance my getting Mad Checks like Peter?123 I saw Ronny Lowenson [Loewinsohn] on Beach, he reminds of Lamantia. Al Sublette arrested for shoplifting, [Bob] Donlin a bartender in Monterey. [Gene] Pippin asked for you. Hal Chase left Berkeley. Neal still the same, borrowed money from me and yakked of Cayce.
Please rush Joan’s letter on.
Love
Jack
Allen Ginsberg [Tangier, Morocco] to
Jack Kerouac [Berkeley, California]
May 31, 1957
c/o US Embassy, Tangiers
May 31, 1957
Dear Jack:
Received your two nice letters, one from NY and your note from Berkeley and got homesick for cottage and Frisco and Mill Valley, seeing you were back there already snugly with your mother and permanent home apartment under the green Ginny trees. Later—first—enclosed find letter from Joan Haverty answering yours with paper to sign. Far as we (Bill, me, Peter) can see she actually wants divorce. Best then forget embarrassment of being discovered on W. Coast USA and sign papers—they have to be notarized there so no use pretending longer you’re here—and send them on to her lawyer. Needn’t send return address if you’re afraid she’ll nonetheless track you down. Her return address on letter was 200 W. 68 St. Apt 4-c, NYC. (We can’t have them notarized here since can only be done at Embassy, with passports etc.) Presumably this will free you finally from the whole deal.
Ansen is here and wanted to add a note, only he left this morn for a five day tour of Southern Spain, Grenada and Cordoba. While he was here we got a lot done on Bill’s manuscript. We typed up the whole word hoard (including part you’d already typed—with some changes, punctuation, separation into paragraphs), and then moved backward on other related Interzone materials, whole chapters, routines all packed together and integrated from the letters—till at this point have about two hundred pages of material finished or ready to be finished—even had Eric hired out typing. Interzone appears now as a mosaic of all the routines, scenes in the Socco Chico, dreams, scientific theories and thought-control fantasies Bill made up the last three years, and it ends with the revelation (radio broadcast by maybe a mad prophet) of Word Hoard. All this will be through, and typed duplicate, by June 8, when we all leave here for Spain. The only thing left will be to go back thru earlier letter-autobiographical material to fit in another hundred pages of personal narrative between Yage and Interzone—work on that’s started already. I don’t know where we’ll do it. (Ansen was great, came and started typing immediately, read through all the notebooks and in fine hand made a huge index of all the material in the letters, sentences, announcements, routines, all
to be integrated chronologically.) (Worked on it like a great professional pedantic scholar with an unruly library full of dignified ancient manuscripts of the Venerable Bill.)
We worked every day, then Peter and I went shopping—Ansen and Bill sharing expenses—and cooked huge meals nightly, Paul Lund still there. Bill and Peter not making it greatly; and I offended at Bill often till one night when he mocking me high on majoun I leapt up and ripped open his khaki shirt with hunting knife and felt bad later.
Ansen comes back in few days to resume work; then he leaves for Venice, and we leave for Madrid. After that dunno. I ran out of money and sent frantic letters to Neal and WCW and home. Williams (I guess you saw thru Whalen letter) came up with $200 thru National Institute Arts and Sciences. But what did Gregory do? He really almost fucked me I guess. Anyway that’s my present capital. As soon as you have enough surplus to send me any, please do so. Bill said you were loath to since you thought I was only wasting it. Be that as it may, later on this year I will be getting on toward broke here, so don’t withhold any money you can send me then for that reason—I’ll be too broke to waste any. I can go from Spain to Venice, and stay with Ansen—But Bill don’t want to go there. Though it might be cheap, Ansen has a pad and great to dig Italia. Also invite from Bill Ullman to spend summer cheap in Italian villa he rented near Florence—eighteen rooms at eighteen dollars a month. Strange, he suddenly wrote us here out of the blue and offered refuge. Or else we can leave Spain and make it to Paris. I’d rather do that and Bill would go. Merims is there too. So anyway tentatively it looks like we leave here (me and Peter) with knapsacks and make our way to Madrid and meet Bill there—he wants to go direct and fast, we’ll go by 3rd class buses. Maybe stay in Madrid awhile and then in July head for Paris. Meanwhile mail’l be forwarded from here, whenever we leave.
Bill sitting on bed now reading new Time about Formosa riots. Paul Bowles arrived three weeks ago and came calling, with [Ahmed] Yacoubi, who is a young handsome good humored Arab about twenty-five, sits in Paris Cafe relaxing in sports shirt bought in India and whistles at girls. Bowles laid on us some Tanganyika T and said Kenya was armed starving concentration camp for natives. Peter and I been over visiting his place and all very friendly, he took me out to escargot and talked about Gertrude Stein and we went over his house and Ansen fell asleep on couch at 3 AM and he played Indian music on tape and rolled huge bombers and talked medicine with Bill. Jane B. [Bowles] also on scene, she thought Peter was a saint. Also a great English painter Francis Bacon, who looks like overgrown seventeen year old English schoolboy, born in Dublin, started painting late at thirty and now he’s forty-seven and wears sneakers and tight dungarees and black silk shirts and always looks like going tennis, like to be whipped and paints mad gorillas in grey hotel rooms drest in evening dress with deathly black umbrellas—said he would paint big pornographic picture of me and Peter. He’s like Burroughs a little—painting a sideline, gambles at Monte Carlo and wins and loses all his paint money, says he can always be cook or trade if he fucks painting—most interesting person here. Bowles wears nylon suits and is very intelligent and sounds like Bill Keck, tho he’s small and has nervous stomach and Bill is going to teach him opium and he has blond close hair. Yacoubi paints childish camels like Klee and is great hipster and loves T, Neal would dig him. Sometimes he cuts around whistling at girls in radiant white robes—says he’s descended in holy family from Mohammed, and has big parchments from Sultan to prove it. . . . But otherwise Tangiers is still a drag. I can’t wait to leave, except we’ve done so much on manuscript I don’t regret tarrying.
Peter upstairs reading Bartleby, started drawing pictures of the Bay last week. I’m reading Israel Potter and read lot Koran and also Typee and many Melville. Written nothing, except dreams and some journal. Ansen goes to Catalana and brings home, “has a boy every day after lunch.” He sent his regards and said sorry no see you. How are you doing and what you doing? Bill quieter lately, had liver trouble so not eat Majoun nor drink so much, easier to live with. We don’t know where we’re going for sure. Peter unhappy here, wants to get on with girls and Europe—soon, soon. But he read a lot. Send me news. What’s with your books and what’s happened to my own in court? Write.
Love, as ever
Allen
Editors’ Note: The following note was written by Ginsberg the same day on a letter to Kerouac from Peter Orlovsky.
Interruption, Allen Speaking—no, not heard from Frechtman yet. What was Gregory’s letter to WCW like? and your visit to him? Where’s Sublette in jail alas now? See Chase before he left, or did anybody see him? We sent Juan [Joan Haverty] her letter you sent us, and this her reply enclosed as I say in my letter formal. By all means pick up that great LaVigne picture of Peter, keep it for us, or lay it on Whalen. What New Haven poet man??? Was this John Wieners of Boston? Tell Whalen to send, definitely, manuscript of poesy to Wieners—he has address—for MEASURE. Am sending Wieners some Burroughs too. This a long range little mag deal, like Black Mountain, with same personnel practically and Olson and WCW blessing. He wrote me today asking for material and wanted to know where Lamantia was, and also Whalen and Snyder, said he received something he liked from [Sterling] Lord, of yours, and would publish it. (received “ten pages of the Book”) (I assume it’s Book of Blues). Tell also, for Whalen to give the “Green Auto”, which I sent him, to Grieg for New Editions, if he can’t or hasn’t given it to Berkeley Review. Elise writes that the girls are all three headed for Frisco soon. What happen with Lucien when you saw him? (his name is now out of my book). Fuck Baldwin, Corso, Frechtmen, Wyse for their inhospitality, I hope they all do better by me.
OK signing off again,
Love,
Allen
Jack Kerouac [Berkeley, California] to
Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, William S. Burroughs, and
Alan Ansen [Madrid, Spain]
June 7, 1957
Dear Allen and Peter and Bill and Monsieur Ansen:
Well, first, Allen, I got the divorce papers you nicely sent, had them notarized, signed, mailed registered mail, with all kindsa receipts to prove, and so I hope now I’ll be left alone in peace so’s I can build me that hut for solitude . . . And I revealed my presence on West Coast but said I was en route to Florida or Mexico or someplace (in case of big tricks to trap me) . . . mwee hee hee ha ha . . . I did not ever think I shouldn’t pay you that $225 because you’d waste it, tell Bill to stop presupposing his own thoughts in my mirror, I only just don’t have it but wait till October when big things will be popping in NY with publication of On the Road and maybe pocketbook offer and movie options and excerpts etc. so you ought definitely get it ere Xmas, don’t worry. As for Neal: yes, Peter, he fine but he borrowed ten dollars off me saying his children were hungry and then I had to go to Frisco one month later and trap him at his train but he only shoveled up two bucks and kept talking all the time. He’s just as mad as ever, cunthappy, but I got a big letter from his wife saying I was a bad influence on him because he was making progress in trying to change to the better things, she says (she defines Dharma as the right way, tho it really means “the meaning”). So Neal persuades me to spend the night in No. Beach and line up some babes, I spent overnight with one gal, but she was a dyke I’m afraid. I met the magnificent Hubert Leslie who is just like DuPeru (who I saw also, he still the same) and Hubert in fact is even coming to visit me at my house in Berkeley (imagine Hube the Cube and my mother in the same room!) Hube is a great painter, he used butter on his last work, he really is not so dumb, he knows PLASTICITY of painting even if he uses shit for his browns, that’s as it should be). Also Leonard Hull and Doris are two very great people, Doris is Hube’s “mother” etc. and they have big mad friends who come around and tiazurpen with big neezzeedles . . . However, first, let me report on Howl. The whole (case) thing was put down and laughed at in Washington by big hep customs inspector lawyers or whatever, so the local dumb Irish cops rushed up on their own initiative and bou
ght Howl in the store and arrested the nice Jap cat who was instantly bailed out by Civil Liberties Union but I went there and there were no more Howls on the shelf. Ferling was out of town and will show up soon to go thru formality of arrest and bail out. It’s disgusting—what’s worse is even some intellectuals are saying it’s too dirty, I have a hunch the intelligentsia of America is really so gutless they might knuckle under the dumb fat Irish cops in time and it’ll be like Germany, a police state. I’m really worried and Bill [Burroughs] was always right. However Rexroth is burning and there are some who won’t be gutless so Allen do not worry. Write a big poem called “Wail” beginning “Wail for the cripples of Morocco crawling on their bellies in the Socco Chico, Wail for the homeless Arab boys sleeping on tables by the sea with their heads in their hands, WAIL for etc. etc.” a big super World Fellaheen Howl instead of just dumb Amurica hepsters. Wail for the boyos with their Catch Mohammed pants!—Wail for the outraged American Queers throwing dirty pictures to the wind!—Wail for the seven foot pederasts leading small boys up the hall!—Allen, I just wrote a mad poem and sent it to John Wieners, yes Whalen and I sent him a big mad letter with Corso, him and me poems, and Gary [Snyder] too, all’s set, we’re all accepted and to be published in the next three issues: My poem went: “Pulling off the human drawers of girls! / Leaving whole pussywillows unblown! / Because I’m a breathless tree!” which I read to Ronny Lowensohn [Loewinsohn] the other night in Place. Mike Grieg of New Editions is publishing my “Neal And The Three Stooges” in this issue, shall I mail him your “Green Auto” now? It’s at Phil [Whalen]’s round the corner. It was turned down by prissy jealous Berkeley high school boys. Tell Ansen I’ll be seeing him within a year anyhow as, if I make loot this fall, I’ll meet you all in Paris and go to Venice. I can’t get over Paris and it was greater than you’ll ever dream in advance!—so I’ll meet you there within a year or two . . . Allen G., that is so mad, so mad, Allen, that line “Ansen worked on the manuscript (of Bill’s) like a great professional pedantic scholar with an unruly library full of dignified ancient manuscripts of the Venerable Bill” (!)—Gregory wrote a big letter to Williams last March or April asking for money saying you and I were loaded but he was poor but somehow it came out sounding like a con organized by us. Yes, you should pick up on Ullman’s offer and Florence is a gas. As to my recent work: poems and some prose, trying to write a huge novel call’d Avalokitesvara but at the last benny sitting it bogged down in metaphysical discussions . . . however I painted The Vision of the Goatherds, which is red shepherds looking at a creamy cross in the heavens, with swirling blue clouds around, and also painted (on peotl at ?’s cottage) more mad flowers exploding out of a (black) pot, and one painting of the yard that I dragged thru the grass like a mad bohemian modern (which I’m not) and painted Smerdyakov124 in the Garden (nowhere) and painted another flower and painted a girl in bed and finally a chalk of Mary and Joseph but I ain’t even started yet. O yes, a perfect drawing of Whalen sitting crosslegs with his pipe, called Buddha Red Ears, or did I tell you all this?