Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  Yes, I saw the Horizon, and broke my rule about not answering, several weeks ago, and wrote them objecting to their chopping out endless balls and cock from line eleven and leaving out two lines and patching in again, saying it “broke my rhythm” and they had to announce next issue that I disapprove and was not consulted and felt it was insult to the structure (which it actually is in a way since two lines they left out were the rhythmic come of the eleven preceding lines). I’m curious how they’ll handle that. They first wrote back saying they meant no harm and consulted Grove, so I wrote back detailed one page explaining rhythm and offering to read it to them over telephone if they couldn’t hear it themselves and requesting prompt reply. But they never replied. Besides I said, I had copyright anyway not Grove. I dunno just a funny piece of spleen like arguing with a bus driver.

  However considering all that bullshit about no form it be funny if they had to print an announcement they’d fucked my form.

  Also I went off my head last week and rapped out twelve page single-space heap of complaints to [John] Hollander in a girl’s school in Connecticut.

  Meanwhile I’m reading the Goddard book which three years ago I stole from I think San Jose library and have been carrying around since. Phil wrote that Gary was now up there with him, that he, Phil, would stay in Oregon till after the elections (he has to help his Judge friend be re-elected) and then maybe come here (he’d said earlier) around Xmas. He hadn’t met Gary yet when he wrote (he was expecting him next day.) Gary’ll write in a few days I think. But he’ll not come I don’t think.

  I reread all of the Bles Blues and’ll return that to Don Allen. I would like to read Some of Dharma etc. later. I’ve never lost your manuscript and had lots of them around. Blues are great, I understand them more perfectly now and they’re like a monumental Shakespeare sonnet sequence.—all to be published entire—it’s a good thing Ferlinghetti didn’t publish a selection, actually. Maybe Laughlin could do it. They’re a marvelous explanation and reaction to Dharma and it’s as good as any late novel, better in fact, all poetry.

  I read The Dharma Bums in one sitting, about five or four hours, the nite Peter brought it back. The whole thing’s a great piece of religion testament book, strange thing to be published, I’m glad it is now tho before I’d worried should it be published out of chronological order—but the definite believable presentation of Buddha material is inspiring like a mad movie about St. Francis. The last pages of haikus are good prose. Sentences seem shorter and not so energetic continually as before, and not so mad. You settling down in simpler prose or just tired as you said? [John] Montgomery is great in there, and Gary is fine too, I don’t dig myself (too inconsistent mentally) (in the arguments). It is a big teaching book which is rare and spooky. It is spooky, I wonder how XX Century NYC newspapers will react to that? This time it should be funny. You’ll get attacked for being enlightened. I made marks on which pages and sentences I thought were groovy, but can show you that in the book when you’re here. Rats in attic sentences at end was sublime, so were all the haikus and rainbows at the end. Meditation in the woods I read aloud, or Sheila [Williams] read aloud, great funny sustained serious final testament prose. Amazing after all these years there would be incarnation of some pre-prophesied romantical sense of The End.

  Did I tell you, Gregory’s, “Hay like universe, golden heap on a wall of fire, sprinting toward the gauzy eradication of Swindleresque Ink”—I decided finally it must be prophecy of disappearance of cosmic illusion. I’d never really understood that in Paterson. Did you see that?

  [ . . . ]

  My poetry is getting to be like your Blues. God knows how I’ll get out of that and what literary hassles that will lead to but now does it make difference? I’m also writing like Whalen also.

  [ . . . ]

  Gave my book to Thelonius Monk—he was silent a week—then saw him outside Five Spot and asked him if he’d read it—“Yeah, I’m almost through.” “Well?” “It makes sense,” what a funny answer.

  Owe Gregory a letter. Bill should be back in Paris now—was in Tangiers—the heat’s on fairies—“India roll out your carpets” he writes.

  When and where is the platform with Lerner? I’d like to go along and hear it all. I never saw you in public.

  As ever,

  Allen

  Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to

  Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]

  October 5, 1958

  Allen:

  Came home full of exhilaration which became mental exhaustion. I don’t think I can do the Hunter College thing now. Like America I’m getting a nervous breakdown. I am going into exile. Wrote Whalen big description of day. All these well dressed people looking at me with slitted eyes, why don’t I just retire from the universe. Ah fuck it, I’m going back to Li Po. I hate my beating heart. Something’s wrong with the world. I’ll be alright in the morning. Grand-father Night in this old house scares me with its black coffin.

  See?

  Jacky

  Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to

  Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]

  October 28, 1958

  Dear Allen:

  Here’s what I’m telling Sterling to do, and it’s what I want: to get that new publisher to buy Sax for $7500 advance but without a single change; thereby Sax gets published, what does it matter who? or hard or soft cover? it’s still publisht and read and can be reprinted in five years hard. I need the $7500 now to complete the buying of this house so I can put it up for sale, if I don’t buy the house now I’ll lose the $7000 already in it, by big defaulting suits. A hard and evil world. But Sax will be angelly published. If they make changes, no go, I give it back to Don Allen. Meanwhile, I’m insisting that Viking take and publish glorious Visions Of Gerard next. No changes except where I’m going to take out the Buddhist imagery and transfer Catholic since the story is about a little Catholic saint. There will be no theological difference . . . The Holy Ghost is Dharmakaya (the body of truth.) See? Etc. Dharmakaya literally means the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Truth, so what’s the big tzimis? So I told them, okay I’ll go to Paris but I won’t write the book about Paris till a year later when I’ve had time to digest the events. Meanwhile, even, in fact, I think now, I know now, when I get to peaceful Florida this Xmas I’m going to write The Beat Traveler anyway about my trip to Burroughs in Tangiers then on up France and London and back, and all the mad sea-writing around that, when I got caught in that great tempest and we had to flee south and almost foundered and I saw the whole jacobs ladder into the sea and saw Stella Maris too and thought NOTHING HAPPENS EXCEPT GOD which was the only thing I could think about because I thought we were all going to drown now . . . O poor seamen.

  Okay. I think this is right. Meanwhile I’m sending “Lucien Midnight” to [Irving] Rosenthal138 and if he rejects it he’s crazy but he may reject it because also I told him to give me whatever payment he can, or wants to pay.

  My hand is shaking so today, Henri Cru came suddenly as I was balling with my baby and the house then became full of local drinkers and if it hadn’t been for the girl cleaning an cooking it would look like hell now. She’s coming back Thursday to take care of things while I try to answer a thousand letters. So today I tried, alone, in house, to sit and write you big glorious poem about golden eternity and couldn’t because I’ve so been importuned by this world lately I can’t even push a pencil any more so now I know if I want to take Lucien’s advice and write more I must leave NY, and will (not so much “importuned” but pleasantly partied, actually, but my god every day, every night, no rest, no solitude, no reflection, no staring at the ceiling or clouds possible any more.) Big mad telegram, for instance, from Lucien, a British lord wants to rush out and interview me and I just GOT interviewed yesterday by Herald Tribune here in house, “millions of cool beautiful Marlon Brandos” I told him to say is what Beat Gen is . . . And Look mag is sposed to be coming out to interview me too, and meanwhile I try to feed and mind my poor fri
ghtened cats, the yard full of cars. When do I find time to type up Neons from Neal. Allen, can’t you go to New Directions office and type up whatever you want (and Laughlin allows). If you need note of intro and permission I’ll send. Short of that, okay, I’ll type up Neons, let me know. As for poems, I just don’t know which ones are forever eternal, goddamit, they the forever eternals I gave Don Allen on that roll but after all I got many more. Why don’t I just send some and you judge, I don’t know. Besides what’s your deadline with City Lights? Let me know deadline, that’ll help prod me in ass.—Bruno never came back the next day, he probably went away saying “Ah he’s just another fag,” you don’t know how those characters are, unless you’re right about river-of-shit I-don’t-care-everything-okay. In any case, whenever I come on with fuck I don’t mean it, it’s just a Zen joke. In fact it’s the one thing I’ve never done, recall.

  The situation about Tuttle etc. and Grove139 I just don’t understand but let me know when time is ripe tho for krissakes yes I don’t care but it’s a good idea for Phil and Gary to get busy and blow out some poems.

  Dody [Muller] is a painter, a big Alene-Esperanza combination in looks (laughs exactly like Alene) but not frigid like Alene, not junky like Espy, built better too, great woman, part Comanche Indian and French, a good painter (huge Al Leslie canvases of pink and blue women bathing) (also little tiny ones so big) and is regular barefoot Provincetown and Mexico City Helen Parker sophisticate also and fantastic cook and clean when does dishes, makes kitchen all beautiful with flowers and displays of vegetables and in the candlelight her face is holy and has black eyes and high cheekbones like I like and everybody likes her and is a young widow. And loves me. And I love her. Don’t know what will happen. Used to draw pornographic pictures in her notebook which her mother threw into the sea weeping. In other words big Neal-favorite good doll and so fucking sensual I can’t believe my good luck. She knows everybody, which is too bad. Altho good because I know everybody too. What a complicated scene is on now, wow, too much. Henri [Cru] lost his apartment by being evicted, bums he left there lost his cat, he came back no apartment, furniture impounded by marshal, is wandering around looking for cheap pad in Lower East Side, let me know if you know one. Henri great man. Likes you now, he told me. Mustv read your book or something.—I sent off a piece of Book Of Dreams to Robert Lowry140 and also part of a letter from Gregory I’d just got, about his theory of poetry. You’ll see it.—What to do? Have another beer.

  And to add to all the confusion of my book coming out and all this new spate of publicity and nervousness my sister had to go and throw HER complications in making my mother babysit for a month and here I am no time to shit and the house getting dirtier every day. If you do come, you could in fact come and browse among my manuscripts and type up what you want for anthology, come with in mind not to dirty house and Peter too, like I’m really harried. I wish you would come, like right now this weekend, fuck Norman Mailer he’s trying to get in the act. Why wasn’t he a hipster when it counted? Why didn’t he talk about God when everybody else was talking about Freud? On Friday night Nov 6 I’ll be at Hunter Playhouse 68th and Park and will drive back with Dody. I still don’t know what I’ll say. I’ll talk a little, give them their money’s worth of Kerouac Beat Generation, then start reading “Bomb” I guess, unless you think of something else and new. (Because I don’t really agree with “Bomb” world-apocalypse is good, I believe in people saying it won’t happen at all because we’ve evolved now and become smart human race. I hope). (microphone in heaven). I’d rather read “Marriage”, can you bring that for me? And do I shoot you question in audience? Will I be in the enemy camp on that mad night? Do I wear Mighty Goodwills? Am I Sirdanah the Mighty Goodwiller? Do I have to be smart? Do I even have to think? Can I drink beer on the stage or shall I show up quiet wordless sober? Will I address Dean Kauffman directly? Oh yes, don’t miss my interview on the editorial page of Herald Tribune, by Ray Price, in which I said the old hipster saw, printed for first time now, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Ike and Dulles and Macmillan and DeGaulle and Khrushchev and Mao and Nehru should all sit around a table and smoke tea? what humor and openmindedness would result, what tender perception.” He said he would make that his lead. When the fuxx fuzz comes to my house there won’t be a joint or pill in the house so never bring any you and Pete. All I have is dexhamyls by prescription from local doctor. [ . . . ] Mike Goldberg was telling me how terrible you and Pete were in the Hamptons, says Joyce [Glassman], I don’t even remember, I was answering eagerly yes to everything he said (blind drunk) and Joyce said I sold you and Peter down the river and that I was a balloon and that I was always worried what the neighbors would think and etc. embarrassing her in public she added and really, now, when we went to Hecht show you remember we tried to sneak out the back way. Is she demented? I hope she doesn’t shoot me before I see Sax in print, and Gerard next fall. As for new chick (new, NEW, I had no old chick) Henri says because she Indian and French she knife me if I ever kid around other girl. O boy, here goes Léon Robinson into the ends of the night.141 What with being pulled apart on earth by you and my mother, in heaven by Buddha and Christ, none of whom can get together I don’t know why except over my suffering carcass, wow, this will be the end of me, I always thought I was too strong to be Stephen Craned like Louis Simpson but it’s almost happening and NOBODY IS RESPONSIBLE? You see Nobody is Responsible. Not even me. Not even my mother. I forgive myself first and then all of you for the origigan original ignorance of wanting to be born in the first place but we’re doing alright, especially you sweetie.

  Jack

  Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to

  Jack Kerouac [n.p., Northport, New York?]

  170 E 2 St

  NYC 9

  Oct 29, ’58

  Dear Jack:

  Called Don Allen. He says Grove will really put out books for Gary and Phil, and he wants to publish Mexico City Blues. Says Grove wouldn’t want all that poetry given to Tuttle they’ll print it. I wrote Gary and Phil saying, then, ask Grove to shit or get off the pot (oops excuse) and find out Grove’s plans, and then do what they want, choose their publisher—or let Phil henceforth deal with Tuttle—either arrange and edit or let them know no—so they don’t get confusing letters from anyone. I also wrote Tuttle that Phil would get in touch with them, that Gary and Phil might have other commitments I dunno, that their letter was sweet and that even if they didn’t get the Zen book of our poems, there were still several manuscripts of yours—poetry, Some of the Dharma, and biography of Buddha and gave them Lord’s address if they wanted to investigate more that. So now I cut out and leave it to Phil and Lord can get in touch with them, tell him, if you want to try Some of the Dharma—which might be great to have them publish.

  Don Allen was also upset—hadn’t received Dr. Sax and wanted to know if anything was wrong. I told him I dunno, but you were finished or near finished with work on it. My opinion—don’t let Madison Avenue try water you down and make you palatable to reviewers mentality by waiting on wildbooks and putting out commissioned travelogues (however good). Sax is logical next book and you’re in a position to do what you want now. Aesthetically Sax and Visions of Neal and Poems. After Sax they’d have to see prose beauty of Neal and also the hero’s real beauty—they been shitting on that poor boy and comparing him unfavorably with nice Japhy [the Dharma Bums character based on Gary Snyder]. Perhaps [Sterling] Lord is impressed with that mentality.

  Sent [Irving] Rosenthal all Burroughs’ manuscript Interzone to use as much as he can next issue.

  Please send me excerpts from Visions, and your best poems forever for the City Lights anthology. There was a long shortline poem adieu / goodby / bonsoir etc. for man in Lowell who dies, GJ’s father? you showed me in Berkeley. Also in Helen Weaver’s pad two years ago a poem in “long lines” about wine trickling down alley in moonlite. Would like those and choose your blues. Yes? Or not—should I get poem from manuscript at Don Allen?

>   Navaretta from the party wrote “At his most drunken, or rather ecstatic point, Jack continued to prove that he could take all of it and sing back. This, after all the fancy words, proclaims the poet and artist. It is a question of enduring, and Jack endures—Please tell him he writes like a brother and that I love him like a brother. And thank him for coming to our party as we also thank you, Allen Ginsberg.” And he wants to have me write a 3¢ a word an article on extreme abstraction in poetry. I dunno anything about that. Do you? Gregory’s a little abstract, that’s all I know. Maybe midnight might be considered abstract type prose. I’ll say I don’t know what it’s all about to him.

  Your public? Goof! how many times have you (forgotten, drunk) challenged me (and Peter and who?) in public anyway, “C’mon I’ll fuck you.” Screw public relations let’s be kind and truthful. Who else dare?

  Love,

  Allen

  Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to

  Jack Kerouac [n.p., Northport, New York?]

  170 E 2 St

  Mon Nov 17, 1958

  Dear Jack:

  Just brought in some furniture from Paterson so have set myself up a nice workroom and desk in the apartment. Enclosed find article from Village Voice I wrote. Also enclosed a letter from Robert Cummings, editor of Isis, the Oxford undergraduate magazine. I gave him some poems of yours while I was in Europe, so he’ll publish them with some of mine and Gregory’s.

  Rosenthal of Chicago Review wired me asking me to phone him Saturday Nite. I did, and he said that the University of Chicago had forbidden him to publish Winter issue, which would have consisted of thirty-five pages select cleanish Burroughs, “Sebastian Midnite” complete, and thirty pages [Edward] Dahlberg. Also said that in future they’d forbid him to publish any of Bill, or you, maybe Dahlberg too even (he wrote a book about Priapus.) Also the University may forbid my poetry reading December 5 under Review auspices. So Rosenthal doesn’t know what to do. I asked Don Allen and McGregor of New Directions to ask Laughlin, but they don’t offer any ideas. I told Rosenthal to write Ferlinghetti and have him print it up as the banned issue Chicago Review, City Lights probably would. Meanwhile Rosenthal and staff not made up their mind whether to go ahead and screw the university and end the review—but they probably can’t anyway as it’s printed at the University of Chicago Press. He’ll probably write you. Meanwhile I’m supposed to go there anyway in two weeks (December 5) and read, somewhere, except won’t get no pay for it, was supposed to get $150. Want to come to Chicago and be communist hassle martyr with me? (Seems the Hearst press there is trying to bug the university, had last year got book by Maud Hutchins, ex-wife of prexy, banned; and new stink comes from Herb Caen type gossip columnists circulating news stories that filthy magazines are being sponsored by the university. So the school gave in.)