by Jack Kerouac
eat in the plum tree grove at the end of the meadow and play their games near the cabin of a white-haired Negro who shows them the mystery of his rain barrel—
sister of exile the new age is yours, your happiness is the Revolution and your hope is the only war no one will lose
Blessed daughter come to America I long to hear your voice again, remembering your mother’s music, in the song of the Natural Front
O glorious Muse that bore me from the womb, and taught me talk and music—whose pained head gave me Visions—O mad hallucinations of the damned
that drive me out of my own skull to seek Eternity till I find peace for Thee—O Poetry!—and for all humankind call on the Origin—O beautiful Garbo of my Karma, your face of old movie stars—white flowers in your hair—
now wear your nakedness forever, no Revolution might destroy this maidenhood—with all the teachers from Newark—nor Elanor be gone, nor Max wait for his specter, no Louis retire from his High school.
Back! you! Naomi! skull on you! gaunt immortality and revolution come—wrinkle cheeked, lip sure—and ashen eyes of hospital indoors, ward greyness on skin—small broken woman—
This come to you now?—what I’ll be when I’m mad as your hair in future 90s, when I scream on the rooftops of Synagogues, bearded toward Heaven?”
So I sent all that to City Lights. I still have to assemble type all other poems—this is already forty pages, maybe I’ll put two books out at once. Sent him “Laughgas” for Beatitude and crazy Orlovsky-Corso-me chain poem on the moon writ in Amsterdam. Peter’s going out to take Laf to NY State Unemployment office to inquire about special part time jobs for him and Laughcadio is going along all dressed in brilliant black, agreeable, they’re leaving door right in a minute.
I’m writing intro to [Ray] Bremser’s book.
Took a lot more ayahuasca and realized I AM the emptiness that’s movie-projecting Kali monster on my mindscreen, projecting mindscreen, even. So not scared anymore. But I still can’t stop the appearance of the fucking mindscreen, I mean I can’t quiet my organism to total silence. I’ll have to study yoga or something, finally.
If Castro pays, I will go for two weeks to Cuba late October to dig that revolution. My laughing gas uncle dentist who’s a liberal but not a radical spends his vacations down there last twenty years just come back and says everybody is all happy and amazed and enthusiastic and big money revolution is going on, social progress, schools, works, etc. and U.S. newspapers are mainly full of shit. LeRoi [Jones] says same. Both agree big Marxist nasty enthusiastic mind-control is also going on, but isn’t so mean yet as former dictatorship nor so savage when weighed against U.S. hysterical mind control. My book’ll be done so I’ll go on short weird Cuba trip and come back and write big revolutionary poem attacking Red China and U.S. and then go to India and shut up.
So that’s me, bubbles. I read long sections of Visions of Cody to Stanley Gould who had a nervous breakdown in my kitchen due to excess goof balls and he said it was the finest thing he heard ever, even he stopped being mean to Neal. How’s Neal? What happened? You saw him I heard from Whalen I think. I still haven’t written him, tho I wrote long poem to/about him three years ago that I finally typed up this week. Is Neal just the same or soberererer?
Peter has been sad all week. Oh also he’s making it with nice nineteen year old Janine [Pommy], sometimes I jump in bed with both.
Taking Lafcadio to see Marcel Marceau tomorrow night, pantomime at City Center. Going with Robert and Mary Frank. He’s done with Babel picture almost, next wants to make full length. I said why don’t you do On the Road? He said good idea but Jack wants to sell it to Hollywood. I said who knows. I saw Subterraneans it was no good. Why don’t you give it to Frank free (on profit-sharing % basis) on condition he make a naked epic? Otherwise he wants maybe to do Journey to End of Night. Or write a script for a movie, new, for him.
[ . . . ]
Well, let’s see. I have money. How’re you doing, need a loan $2 bucks? Tell your mother you’re the man in the moon. God I’m having trouble with Poppa over Kaddish he wants me to excise interesting parts about his own private life, about an affair he had with grocery man’s wife twenty years ago. Doesn’t even want to appear human. Well I’ll excise. He’s retiring this January and plans to trip to Paris in September. Also wants try mescaline. Wrote his doctor asking advice and a prescription for mescaline.
[ . . . ]
Lucien, he moved, same phone, Peter and Laf and I went over for huge days of painting his walls white. Then I went home and painted my apartment dazzling white too. All new and clean where I live with Chinese scrolls hanging on wall. Threw out TV set and a lot of other unworkable junk.
John Wieners much better lives with Irving [Rosenthal], wrote a book called Jewels. So we went to a party he all dressed up, over 8th St. Bookstore, he’s so hard up, drunk there, loning like an elegant alcoholic, not the cockroach of last year, so he starts feeling me up, I drag him in the bathroom blow him, he’s under the sink and can’t even come. I say, “alright skeleton art thou not yet disillusioned with they orgasmal corpse?” He says “Long ago” and pulls out his false teeth and shows me his death’s head. We sit laughing on the bathroom floor over our decaying bodies, me pointing to my balding skull. What a gas all this is! what a weird eternity we live in!
Peter moans, John isn’t satisfied, May’s the same, Irving longs, Bill cuts up, Gregory wrestles Berlin, Laf gets dressed, Janine she lays, Huncke hides, are you not tender today? Some more strange young spectral kids appeared on scene hang around 2nd Ave. and 8th St. broke near Jazz Gallery wait for Monk to walk up street to buy a paper and gape gently on’m. Peter met them while I was in South America, one’s named Turk, one is Mickey, they read Alice in Wonderland and take ashmador powder you buy it in drugstore for asthma if you eat it you go blind, hallucinate cigarettes and doors, think you’re walking on the street when in bed, they watch the weird, for twenty-four hours, then are OK again.
I have a 1½ foot long knee drum someone brought from Africa, and play it well after two months practice at odd moments every day. Has a nice sound, best drum I ever had near.
OK I’ll shut up.
Love
Allen
Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]
Dear Allen: (Sept 22 60)
Yes, just got back, big TWA Ambassador flight tax deductible with wine and champagne and filet mignon and Chinese Tapei ambassador’s wife in front of me etc. New York seems cowed and nasty after anarchistic crazy freewheeling Frisco. Saw everybody. Neal greater than ever, sweeter by far, looking good, healthy. Walks to work in Los Gatos now as tire recapper—would be willing to play Dean in On the Road movie, anything better than tire recapping. SP railroad won’t take him back but want ME back (Al Hinkle reports) (because all read “Railroad Earth”, forgetting what a lousy brakeman I was). Much to tell you about Neal and everybody. Gave Neal money in crisis, he very glad now, crisis was solved and he got fine new rubywine Jeepster with good motor—gave him 100—(for rent) (he was fired). He got new job he walks to. Had love affair (I did) and almost got married with his mistress Jacky [Gibson] but I was drunk. Prior to drunkenness I was alone three weeks in woods in fine quiet fog with animals only and learned a lot. Have changed, in fact—Am quieter, don’t drink as much, or so often at least, and have started new quiet home reading habits. For instance had 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica mailed to me (35 bucks whole price) 29 volumes containing 30,000 pages and exactly 65,000,000 words of scholarly Oxford and Cambridge prose (65 million that is) and last night stayed up till 5 A.M. amazed in that sea of prose—looked up Logia where Jesus is reported to have said (on old Egyptian papyri dating to 2nd century) that one must not cease seeking for the kingdom and WILL WAKE UP ‘ASTONISHED’ in the kingdom! (just like my bliss-astonishment of golden eternity faint). Apocrypha, Shmapocrypha!—Thought I’d also look up bats as there was a bat in Big Sur kept ci
rcling my sleeping bag every night til dawn, was referred to Chiroptera (chirop is Greek for “hand,” tera “wing”)—found what amounts to a small volume of complete technical explanation with pictures and diagrams. This is the prize of prizes! I’ve been waiting for this 29 volume edition since I first saw it age sixteen in Lowell High Library. It’s possible to make complete studies in Theology of ALL religions, for instance, or study of all Tribes in the World, or all Zoology, all History to 1909, all Campaigns till then in detail, all Biography till then, all Mysticism, all Kabbalas and Shmabbalas, all rare scholarly treatises on Old and New Testaments, all about Buddha, Hindus, rare exotic Malayan religions, visions, all Ornithology, Optometry, Pasometry, Futurometry and in other woids ALL. I simply can’t believe such an Ocean as the Pacific any more’n this encyclopedia—so my new reading habits: also bought fifty bucks worth of books from Ferling and have those (Pound, etc.)—and soberly studying now, writing new book (started anyway)—doing exercise (headstands, snake pushups, bent bow and knee bend and breathing)—feeling fine—lost ten or fifteen pounds—only got drunk once since home two weeks. Wanted to get new novel in or underway before calling you but made a false start. Had to keep Henri Cru away who went and got himself job as electrician in Northport (!) and wanted to inundate my life as usual with all the ridiculous trivialities of his fancy—so he mad. But I can’t worry about every tom dick and harry who used to leave me alone to write Visions of Neal at my lonely happy rolltop desk in the early fifties.
Meanwhile, at Big Sur, I sat by sea every day, sometimes in dismal foggy roaring dark of cliffs and huge waves, and wrote Sea, first part, SEA: the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur California. All sound of waves, like James Joyce was going to do. Wrote mostly with eyes closed, as if blind Homer. Read it to gang by oil lamp. McClure, etc. Neal etc. all listened but it’s just like Old Angel only more wave-plop kerplosh sounds, the sea don’t talk in sentences but comes in pieces, as like this:No human words bespeak
the token sorrow older
than old this wave
becrashing smarts the
sand with plosh
of twirléd sandy
thought—Ah change
the world? Ah set
the fee? Are rope the
angels in all the sea?
Ah ropey otter
barnacle d be—
(barnacle d be), rather, with the “d” all alone. Anyway this, and what Logia Jesus said about astonishment of paradise, seems to me much more on the right tracks of world peace and joy than all the recent communist (and general political) hysteria rioting and false screaming. Cuba Shmuba—I will come New York, open your lock with key you gave me, wait if you not there, am buying rucksack etc., will see Lucien etc. so see you and Petey soon. Okay.
Will come around the 28th—meanwhile please drop another line and enclose Mescaline Notes and Gregory Letters for the Cream File.
Jean
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., Northport, New York?]
ca. October 13, 1960
Dear Jack:
Just finished hamburger sandwich. Pete and Laf on 14th St. helping LeRoi Jones paint new huge apartment. I didn’t mean to sadden you leaving you in taxi alone speeding away uptown. Here’s a poem. You OK? Your book [Lonesome Traveler] is very good, I sat down and read it yesterday at one reading and laughed aloud tickled by sentences lots times, aloud. I don’t know what Lucien was screaming about except he thought you shouldn’t have been so nice to McGraw Hill filling out their form. However saw Cessa last nite to watch Nixon Kennedy debate, and later found, what upset her and Lucien, you drunk started telling her kid brother Lucien saga 1943 she said and were talking to Lucien about writing book on him. I heard that part in passing but hadn’t known it was the center of the evening for him. You ought to go there non-drunk some time and just have a nice quiet evening chatting with him and makem happy. The biography of him is just an open nerve if you throw it at him, particularly when drunk.
I also read Leadbelly’s poems (songs) this afternoon. He’s great poet. Also reread Happy Birthday of Death, Gregory is even better than I thought. I hadn’t read anything of his or thought about him for a month and read this and it made so much ethical sense, especially his poem about Clown.
Anyway two days ago I finished my book [Kaddish and Other Poems] and sent it off airmail special complete to Ferlinghetti. I have one more big raving politics poem to add in if I finish it ever.
Saw the debate. Nixon is saying we should war against China for Matsu and Quemoy [Islands]. Kennedy is saying, no, which is a mistake to say tactically. But Nixon is taking advantage of this and talking hypocritically about U.S. not “giving an inch” to the communists. He is very evil, like that. I registered I’ll vote for Kennedy. Both are phony and both are outright warmongers, the communists are right on that. Both want to START physical war on Cuba—have said so. But at least Kennedy’s hypocrisies on this seem to mask some desire to withdraw from the whole U.S. aggression shot, and Nixon seems like he really wants war, like the Daily News. The Daily News really is asking for war, I read it. Or at least Nixon seems the more loudmouth super-patriot demagogue of the two. I don’t see why you’ve switched your judgment back to favoring him. Obviously Kennedy is more liberal and for more foreign wheat aid type and less tied up with phony military patriotic grandeur and less an FBI type, in intention. Not that it makes much difference America is sunk either way because it’s just plain selfish. The more extremely nasty we get the worse the communists get and anybody who doesn’t want to give a shit gets caught in the middle.
Like it occurred to me today we already have a planned economy but all the planning of most of our government huge budgets is military. So we’re already socialist so what’s all the shouting about why don’t we be hip planned socialists and make food and power instead of gas bombs, to defend ourselves against socialism. You don’t think anybody’s starving in the world. Nobody in America thinks so. This country is evil and Whitman and I now spit on it and tell it to be nice or die, because that’s what’s coming. I HATE AMERICA! Ugh, and Nixon and Kennedy combine all that’s most obnoxious. But Nixon does take the cake.
I suppose all this hate is unpatriotic to eternity but fuckit I’m going to die anyway.
The subliminal suggestions I receive reading the papers are horrid. I don’t see why you like Nixon already, yet. AGHHHHHhhh! I gotta go uptown see my father for supper he goes to a play tonight I have supper. Forgive my rant.
Love,
Allen
Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]
October 18, 1960
No, I was kidding about 1943 biog.—also about Nixon—making old argumentative scenes on couch, see—tell them. I not goin vote but would for Kennedy—everybody should simply make a vow of kindness and let it go at that, try to stay sober too—start new party Vow of Kindness party. Yes, starvation in world, because too many new babies everywhere, so no need for vow of poverty. Make vow of kindness. All hate unpatriotic to eternity after all—people forgetting that lately, even you, me, s’why world blooing. I gotta stay outa NY now, no more go there now—if Greg come you come him Petey you we talk in Mrs. O’s big pad. Me no drink no more—me crazy now—me see hoodoo voodoo—is your chimu turtle voodoed? I can’t answer you questions bout politics because it is all bloody impossible discrimination of riots and yelling horror on account don’t blame em for fear of bombs, I pray for world and pray it works, I feel awful today, can’t write later.
J
1961
Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France]
April 14, 1961
Dear Allen:
Just read narrative section of Kaddish, which has impact of Dostoevskyan novel. The whole package, with later visionary poems, makes one explosive book. No reviews yet, as tho they just wanted to wish you out of existence, the big Wilburs and Hollanders wee
ping in their pillows—no reviews either of course of Book of Dreams. Time for us to quit the literary scene and talk to none of them any more, I say. Things okay here, Gene doing good, we move soon, me free soon—me prayed also to cut lush, prayers answered so far. When have time give me rundown on latest Gregory soul-mind. Your early prevision of police-cabaret-beatnik troubles coming true—big political out-in-the-open battle now with John Mitchell coming on like Mayor. I studying Kant, Schopenhauer, Spinoza etc. all great minds agreed with Buddha—Lucien and Harry Smith called me high on phone. Why Bill “fled”?—Infinite Swarming Light—Bill’s Hassan Sabbah says there is no Time and no Thing in Space—Well? he no agree in 1957. Oh Hum, vanity is a bore. Brand new world a-coming—Hello.
Jean-Louis
1963
Editors’ Note: Letters from this point on became increasingly rare. Ginsberg wrote long descriptions of his travel adventures, but Kerouac did not respond in kind. Two letters written at the end of Ginsberg’s two-year exile in India were exchanged in 1963. They sum up the high regard each held for the other.
Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [Kyoto, Japan]
Dear Allen: (June 29, 1963)
Was hesitant to write to you care of damned India where letter might be lost but hope you gets this anyway—Just now had a flash of understanding what a gone friendship we’ve had really, not only all the wild letters we exchanged (I have all your letters neatly filed here in my new steel office file and you can browse anytime and use them etc.) and all the wild adventures together on Brooklyn Bridge, Columbia, Frisco, Mexico, etc. and elsewhere later, but all that bombed-out literature we started (bombed-out-of-mind) and all the swirls and levels, like just now I was sitting daydreaming of Burroughs and Huncke finally meeting again in your 7th Street kitchen tomorrow and you and I are wringing our hands with delight and winking at each other as Huncke says, “Well, well,” and Burroughs replies etc. Which is just another way of saying how much I respect you and value you, Poit. When you come to my new house in N’Port it will be perfect if you don’t have that beard and long hair, who cares about that shit anyway? Let me see your cherubic haircut. Just saw Eugene [Brooks] who just came to my house and I really wanted to chat with him (have been conversing with Eugene a lot since you left and find him highly intelligent, as much as you in a way) but he brings a crazy Rabbi who wants me to rush around like Norman Mailer renting out Carnegie Hall and going to Stork Club and getting in Winchell because “great works of art” should be publicized etc., his name is Richard something-or-other, actually nice guy but I don’t want to abandon my solitude and reading and quietude for just a lot of horseshit showing-off in public. Besides On the Road is finally contracted for a movie, I’ll get five percent of the budget when shooting starts, five percent of the budget when picture released, and then five percent of the net profits of the company which will be headed by the guy who will turn Road into a scenario and also direct: name of Bob Ginnet . . . so I don’t need to make money scenes, just enough for me anyway, since as you know I always collect my change when I leave a woman, and besides I hate the bitches now they’re all such a bunch of whores and liars like Joan [Haverty] doubly ly lieing yet—Lies about me that hold me up to the world as a liar!152—But to hell with that, I’m thinking of something else, it’s just started raining: my new pad here is at 7 Judyann Court, off Dogwood Road, keep that address a secret and put it in your notebook under the name of The Wizard of Ozone Park, under “W”, and when you come to N’Port, there’s the house, 7 Judyann Court, off Dogwood Road, instructions, etc.—Best house I ever had with big backyard with thrity-two trees all around and six foot tall wood fence of Alaskan cedar, basketweave style, nobody see me as I read in sun or goop among tomato plants and my mother feedeth the birds and they thrash in the birdbath and in my room is groovy new Telefunken FM (West German) set with big Bachs and Mozarts or jazz anytime, and full finished basement with den and FM music and records and later maybe a pooltable—Nothing fancy, just right—Only problem is too much local visitings from bores—No Lucien come yet, no Allen, just pain-in-the-ass visitors, as usual—One new friend rather nice, Adolf Rothman, schoolteacher and clamdigger, learned and quiet—Jewish Lenin face—But tonight, ugh, unavoidable visit from 2 teenagers who want me to go meet girls in dance bars, will not go but just play them music awhile—Please tell Gary [Snyder] when you see him, or write him, to excuse me for the enraged letter I wrote him drunk on a quart of Canadian Club whisky in which I excoriated women forever, tho I meant it, I didn’t mean to be mean to Gary, who however didn’t seem to mind and wrote back he was sending me a present. (Some dopey Jap cunt “psychoanalyzed” Subterraneans in school like a real square Vassar shot.) A “living woman” indeed, what do they want me to do, screw cadavers? All mixed up letter, this, I really ain’t got my heart in it, had so much to say when I got on typewriter just now, well anyway this’ll let you know I’m with you all the way, but I want you to know, no like writing letters any more, getting like Neal now, I dunno why, sure would like to see you instead. Having Giroux look at Whalen’s new book of poems (very good), returned McClure’s novel without comment (hated it, cheapskate beatniks with guns in their briefcases kicking girls and sitting around being dull on pot), am recording great library of classical and jazz tapes, saving letters, filing them, wrote letter defending Subs to Italian Judge in Milano where Subs being on trial for banning with bishops of Milano behind it with Montini was the bishop of Milano, my painting of Montini might be color photoed in Time or Satevpost [Saturday Evening Post], just sold a chapter from new novel to Holiday mag about “On the Road with Memere” (me and my mother in Juarez reroute Frisco 1957), and generally I being clam and readable tho had to quit local bars because a big blond fag wants to shoot me with gun because I called her a fag I guess, don’t remember, cops watching me, local clamdiggers fucked up, my cousin Moon-cloud came to see me here to tell me his story was just a lot of shit (I still don’t know), we went Lucien NY and girls and scenes, all a mad mixed up mess whenever I leave the house so I stay home and this summer I think be nice go to Quebec and write that for Holiday and then in the Fall, when Visions of Gerard is out, take off for Cologne Germany, London, Paris, Cornwall and Brittany although I don’t know, don’t care much, all’s in my heart HERE IN MY HEART, Ami.