by Jack Kerouac
Anyway I’m reading up about the Kabala and Zohar and Gnostics, I always been curious and never did find the right book about them till lately. Same as Zen, when it all boils down.
No, I never got a ticket for Peter even. For that matter I haven’t yet actually received my own ticket just an invitation. I’d thought you were invited because Ferlinghetti told me so. Maybe you weren’t. The reason I am is that a Chilean Professor at Berkeley stole Howl and translated it in a black market edition in Chile and now he wants to make up for not telling me and paying me by getting me invited.
Yes, poetry ain’t nowhere without drama, go back to writing big dramaturgies and I will too. Kaddish is actually a forty page story, narrative. Except that I never know what I write and haven’t the novelistic strength to sit down and continue on one track for more than thirty hours at one stretch—can’t pick up. Or never have tried. Maybe with benny might be able to. It takes strength of body to continue, unbroken, the same line in several sessions. I just never had that trick, like I never went to graduate school.
Paetel no stinker, I presume, I never found him to be so, in fact he’s scholarly bibliographist, the only one with patience to make a scholarly bibliography. I don’t know anything about his business relations and don’t care. Leave that to agents. Yes money in your case is poetic. WHY NOT? In fact think of Shaw, the mad socialistic mentalist capitalist.
When I get up out of apartment (I’m taking antibiotics) I’ll phone Lucien and find New Years eve, I phoned him from Paterson to say Merry Xmas on Xmas eve and told him to call you and relay same. Peter is happy with Lafcadio here. That’s what he’s been waiting for.
50,000 is not much money, make it 100,000—invest that in something stable, and live off the income.
I got $500 check from Ferlinghetti and paid all my debts for years—$60 [Bob] Merims, $50 Al Leslie, $203.11 to Columbia, $17 dentist, $5 doctor, and $100 State Department to get Peter’s passport back. Wiped us out but now I don’t owe anyone anything. Feels strange. Fucking Columbia people began suing my brother for the money—somebody anonymous had put up $100 to reduce the debt—and Barzun wrote me he couldn’t get the finance committee to erase the debt in return for the big reading I gave there. They really are evil. I wrote them mad three page insane I ACCUSE letter demanding they stop teaching my poetry at Columbia—then tore it up, paid the $200 left, said farewell to them and now it’s forgot forever and I don’t have to hassle over it.
[Ray] Bremser still in jail and looks like he’ll be sent back for a year. Seems that the chaplain at Bordentown heard him spouting on radio against prisons and pot laws, reported him, and now the bureaucracy got him in maw. He’s charged with “associating with undesirable characters” among other things. That means me. The institutions and academies are really heartless. Anybody wants to have a revolution I don’t want to be in the middle of it but I couldn’t care less.
Neal’s Xmas card to me said “Kneel!” nothing else for signature.
Finished typing Laughgas notes—now the whole poem’s eleven funny pages and done.
[ . . . ]
Allen
See you tonite.
1960
Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]
January 4, 1960
Dear Allen:
Got your long letter which I put away in my new INTERESTING LETTERS folder. I have a FAN LETTERS folder, and CREAM FILE, and BEAT ANTHOLOGY folders and that is a good way to dispatch.
Not that your letter wasn’t cream file but it was your new poem which is very good and will be published.
Enclosed find $40 to cover taxi fare, other taxis, bottles and part of Chinese restaurant bills.
I got long letter from Lew Welch, a funny card from John Montgomery who is actually a pest because he wants me to send him albums, books, and puts down Mexico City Blues (“low material”).
I am home safe now for a thousand years.
I want to write. I don’t want to write letters (I got big huge letter from some Brierly type saying Neal isn’t as great as Jerry who stole from private homes and got elected president of high school class and why don’t I write about HIM instead of Neal) (isn’t that awful?) (Neal who read the Lives of the Saints and never stole anything PERSONAL from poor people).
So I’ll stay home 1000 years now and write Beat Traveler fast (soon as Don Allen comes through with my needs) (which aren’t drastic demand) and one slow book about something probably Harpo Marx vision . . . Me and Harpo and W.C. Fields and Bela Lugosi hitch hiking to China together.
Note, send me note before Chile.
Or not . . . or from Chile . . .
[ . . . ]
Jack
Editors’ Note: In January 1960, Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti went to Chile for a writers’ conference. Allen decided to stay in South America, and remained there for six months, searching in remote regions for yage, the hallucinogenic vine that Burroughs had described ten years earlier.
Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, New Jersey]
June 20, 1960
Dear Allen:
Peter sent me your aether notes, I numbered the pages before they get screwed up and even tied a paperclip on but if you want me to type them up for you also, I will, I probably will anyway as I would like to read it en toto fast. Great new long poem of yours. I haven’t really studied it yet, answering letter first—But it surprised me that when you were really hi on ether and heard the bells (“The sound of the bell leaving the bell,” said Basho in a haiku) you thought of me, as I thought of you at the highest hi on mescaline last Fall. When on mescaline I was so bloody high I saw that all our ideas about a “beatific” new gang of world people, and about instantaneous truth being the last truth, etc. etc. I saw them as all perfectly correct and prophesied, as never on drinking or sober I saw it. Like an angel looking aback on life sees that every moment fell right into place and each had flowery meaning. Your “universe is a new flower” is a perfect statement like that, as tho thought on real hiness [high-ness]. But I’m making no effort any more (like you) to get real high and write visions, it seems I have to wait right now, I’m a little exhausted actually from all those Angel Midnights of past few years when I went all out. But what I really must do is get off by myself for first time since On the Road 1957 so I’ll take a secret trip this summer and live alone in a room and walk and light candles, in Mexcity probably, where nobody’ll know me or see me. Have to have a holiday to rediscover my heart, like—These innumerable friendships of mine are too much. Do you realize what happened just this last week for instance and as example: Jack Micheline writes big nutty letter all dabbed with tears from Chicago finally asking for ten dollars—Gregory writes “Come to Venice at once! Money is my friend!” (when I’d told him I might be sent there by Holiday on assignment)—Charley Mills and Grahame Cournoyer call me insistently from the Village for money and I have phone number changed—My sister wants to borrow a thousand for her house—(ahead of even the house)—Lew Welch hints he needs a hundred for his jeep. You invite me to fly to Peru, Gary [Snyder] to Japan, [Alan] Ansen to Greece, [John] Montgomery to Mill Valley to go live with him mind you, old Horace Mann school chums to reunion, art galleries to their art shows to buy stuff, etc. etc. I didn’t put you in there because you belong in the battalion of money-askers (look, if I complied with all these recent wishes, including the other ones, I’d have no more money! always wondered why “rich” people were “tight” like Jay Laughlin or old 1945 Bill now I realize it’s because, it’s NOT because they’re tight but they’re outnumbered by money demands (and saddened too). Anyway how can I get into contact with the Nameless One by leaving myself open to all this? I must go and be quiet and alone, like God, awhile, again. To come back with something to write. Not that I haven’t written enuf and god I’m sick of poetry and literature. Maybe everybody else is and that’s why they’re starting a war. Well I still haven’t s
hown you my mescaline notes of last Fall. I will when you get back—Much like ether. When we had ether with Jordan Belson in 1955 we were not alone to lie down and think and listen to bells and scribble, instead we talked and went to Chaplin movie. I only saw Peter once or twice since you left, and Laff, and Huncke, usual Chinese dinner. Laff told Lois [Sorrells] he was a nice young boy blown out of a volcano with a gun—(quote)—I told her to write down notes of all he said, he talks to her a lot as they walk arm in arm to Chinatown behind me and Petey and Hunk. Mainly I sit under the stars and realize the same old blooey samsara is nevertheless empty. Feel like going to Heaven, now, in fact. But I could really write a wild doosy book to knock out everybody—including myself. Don Allen’s anthology was fine. Our own anthology I think Tom Payne is being fired for, he will go to Bantam books and work there with it and my f uture novels—Tristessa out this week—not a word changed. Good review by that penthouse Dan Talbot of West End Avenue we saw, remember, in 1957, the two Israeli girls night, with Sterling—Where he says that people who claim the “immense sincerity” of the beat generation is a literary racket, is wrong. Anyway I’m bored with all this again, the whole present history of the world bruits on the horizon but I’m watching the freedom of eternity in the starry sky and wondering why the dream of life and history seems so real except to remember old dreams (sleeping dreams) when a tree was thought real, an attacker was thought real, in fact, oh yes, Ferling is putting out Book of Dreams with all my great NEW dreams at the end including the Flying Horses I saw and a final great dream about shit—That’ll be: for this year: Golden Eternity by LeRoi [Jones] put out: Tristessa, by Avon put out; Lonesome Traveler, by McGraw-Hill put out (I put together 250 pages of pieces from mags including our beatnik nightlife new york and Gregory bums hobos and bullfight and statue of Christ all new stuff about Henri Cru, Mexico, railroad (all of railroad earth and new chapters) and things about mountains, Tangiers etc. not a bad book and to be on non-fiction list)—I now have 18 grand in the bank and not touching it—4 grand in checking for expenses—taxes took 16 grand last year—(this year paid)—not much compared to Senator Herbert Lehman and his half a million dollar donation last week to the Zoo.
But my mother is guarding over my money, my health, Lois comes to fuck and suck, Tom Payne (newly married) comes with new millionaire wife to get smashed. Has a cabin in Vermont I may live in soon. Think I’ll just quietly sneak to Mexico (don’t tell anybody especially Lamantia!) and get my visions in.
If perchance you will be in Mexico in late July or August on your itinerary let me know, I’ll have nice pad with flowers in window, you can stay a week or so or two. That is, if I go. See, that’s my life now, I never go anywhere or do anything. My last run to New York was so awful, a month ago, I haven’t been back—I had nightmares, I saw ghosts—Bill Heine scared me, Charley Mills scared me, a big nutty trappist priest kept making me kiss a relic encrusted in rubies (but he did play me Bach for two hours). Everybody was smiling at me even Ornette Coleman, I was in torn blue jeans Lucien had torn, also had torn off all my underwear in front of Cessa in the house and I didn’t even remember the next day. There is a great deal of talk about Voodoo, too, in the Village now, which scares me. People are sticking dolls. The police just closed down Gas-light [Cafe] and few other places for no good reason ‘fire hazard’. Henri Cru is presently rushing back from Genoa to see me and tell me all about Fernanda Pivano the date I arranged for him with her and that will take up a thousand hours of energy could go on solitude visions, see? And remember, remember my introspective laziness not at all like your great social energy. Oh yes, John Holmes they said in the Times that I was a disciple of his and [Anatole] Broyard and [Chandler] Brossard in 1952 (forgetting 1950 Town and City hipster chapters) so Holmes get drunk and writes big sentimental letters about my boyish smile and “little Allen”—Is he crazy? I think Holmes is going crazy—Micheline is out of his mind. I enclose the letter he forwarded you about one of his nutty woodcut visions (you know, remember those woodcuts we saw with Gilmore in 1945 showing “the young poet in New York”?) the sentimental view of the “youth” in the white shirt among dark towers—this is Micheline, his vision—I mean, dearie, strictly from Marc Brandel.
Don’t hear from Burroughs but was pleased he mentioned I named Naked Lunch (remember, it was you, reading the manuscript, mis-read “naked lust” and I only noticed it) (interesting little bit of litry history tho). James Wechsler has come out with his book Reflections of an Angry Middle-aged Editor where he excoriates me (maybe you too) for political irresponsibility and complicating up America with poetry. [Al] Aronowitz will come out soon I guess, I got mad at him for million mistakes, I straightened out a lot of them (mostly about me but some about others).
Well what am I living for? all I’m good for now is to graipe gripe gripe like this?—if I could only have a month alone, and smile and talk to myself quietly in French in a flowery sad Mexican midnight study, with a big garden wall with lizards maybe . . . by god I’ll do it! don’t tell anybody! Of course, in the Fall, new energy will come to all of us. I’m really afraid to go to India because we may be caught here in a big Red Chinese invasion and wind up emaciated torturees in prison camps because we won’t admit to insects in the snow. Now, no, I’ll buy a five hundred acre mountain and build a cabin on the southern slope of it. Tom Payne wants to go on a big gay Paris trip with Scott Fitzgerald women in the Fall, I dunno. I’ve been making wonderful tape recordings off the radio jazz, FM, and have hours of jazz. Just wrote a column on jazz for Escapade all about Seymour Wyse. Previous column about Zen, mentions you and Peter. But mainly, I’d like candlelight novel now. But, you know, it seems I’m getting to be like the old Kerouac of 1944, when Lucien and you talked and I just sat brooding, remember, because I was bored and confused. Maybe that’s better for rest of my life that silly Zen Lunatic yakking on Brandeis stages I don’t really mean anyway—yes—but I love you, Allen, don’t bug me when you come back to New York about all your enthusiastic plans to go here, go there (like the fiasco of taking me to the Living Theater when I wanted to go hear jazz and I got in trouble with Butch [Frank] O’Hara)—just a gag—but forgive me and love me, if I seem not to share your particular enthusiasms, and those of poor dear Gregory, I just don’t care the same way any more, I am going to become now a hairy loss old man with not-thoughts and no-talk almost. I’m trying to stop drinking—my soul is deeper than ever maybe because emptying—all you write in “Aether” is true and forever true. Pray for everybody, I guess. And Old Neal is out—wow—but I don’t want to see him because, in the past he scorned me for being a drunken yakker, now he’ll also laugh at me for making money at it (tho I know he has serious Jesuit undergarments where he knows I’m just a funny humble priest). But here’s to our Birthday! Much love.
Come back soon
Ti Jean XXX
Editors’ Note: While Ginsberg was away, Kerouac continued to struggle with alcoholism. In July he went to Ferlinghetti’s cabin in Big Sur to try to dry out once and for all. He was unsuccessful, but while in California he saw Neal and Carolyn Cassady for the last time. Big Sur is based on this period.
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p, Northport, New York?]
Sept 19, 1960
170 E 2 St NYC
Dear Jacky:
You home? You home? You home? Leave home again! Fly to the Congo! Rush to Tibet! Be with Cuba! Jump underneath Algeria! Flop on Taiwan! Screech to a stop on the Isle of Weight! Warble!
Well all’s the same here, except Huncke moved up to Hotel Belmore Lex and 25th St., but down on cocanyl intake to one bot a day and sold a story (Cuba) to Seymour Krim at Swank. Carl Immemorial Miel Solomon comes out weekends and so’s stayed at my apartment drinking tranquillizers and talking all night, mostly complaints about his identity. I laid on him the fact that he is the one who is making up all these here identities but it don’t seem to penetrate much. Anyway he’s less violent than he was.
&nb
sp; Thank you for the love of God which arrived by telegram from Frisco followed next day by a green pill from [Bob] Kaufman who lies upstairs but doesn’t bother me, a pill he said they give to people the night before they go into gas chamber in Alcatraz, I sat down at desk 3 p.m. last Wednesday and did not rise except to pee till 9 p.m. Thursday nite, having typed up complete Kaddish manuscript adding in various Shelleyan hymns written in sob-racked exhausted trances, and took it to 33rd St. post office to mail to Ferlinghetti special delivery Saturday nite at 4AM, that’s done.
Gregory in Berlin asks me should he come home? Bill writes he is sifting and panning thru cut-ups of his prose for the gold and joining them together with virus glue. I think he hasn’t been laid so long he’s going fruity . . . however latest letters are very sweet and kind, he even cut up and typed out some of my poems to show me how he’s working. So Peter and I cut up some of our magic psalms to shuffle rearrange and send him. Just having a little fun mother.
“I went in—smelt funny the halls again—up elevator—to a glass door on a Woman’s Ward—to Naomi—two nurses Buxom white—they led her out—Naomi stared—I gaspt—
too thin, shrunk on her bones—age come to Naomi—now broken in white hair—loose dress on her skeleton—face sunk, old!—cheek of crone—
Heaviness of early 40s and menopause reduced by one heart stroke—one hand stiff—a scar on the head, the lobotomy, her ruin—the hand dipping downwards to death—
O Russian faced, woman on the grass, your long black hair is crowned with daisies, the mandolin is on your knees
Communist beauty, all this summer promises to share its flowers everywhere you have your hand
Holy mother now you smile on one you love, your world is born anew, your children run naked in the field spotted with dandelions—