Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (22 page)

Now you realizes you old bonepoles, the two of you, whuzzat means? I can get a book out if I want! New Directions (I guess). Whaw? An you realize further, [William Carlos] Williams is also nutty as a fruitcake. It also means we can
all
get books out (just you and me and Neal) (don't tell Lamantia,
⁶⁵
he's too polite) all we got to do: I have a new method of Poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks (that's where I got those poems) or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries, the mis'ries, or night thoughts when you can't sleep an hour before sleeping, only get up and write it down. Then arrange it lines of 2, 3 or 4 words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of 2, 3 or 4 lines each. We'll have a huge collected anthology of American Kicks and Mental Musseries. The American Spiritual Museum. A gorgeous gallery of Hip American Devises. Like:

So much for that.

I canna make tail of your letter? Who signed what? Who calleth me sweetheart? Don't you guys got names no more?

Stamp money I, impoverished, will send you. What happened when my poetry was read aloud? Anybody cry? Send me Peotl [peyote]. Tell Lamantia I need Peotl for my methaphysical moo. Good! you wrote Bill [Burroughs]. I will give Ginger one big abstraction. I still never seen John H [Clellon Holmes]. But he will appear.

BUSINESS!!!!!

See? Carl [Solomon] sent contract. Lousy contract (what no million?) but its O.K.
⁶⁶
Look it over. Also, finish book soon, so you don't have to wait alla way to 1954 to collect more moolah. Gene [Eugene Brooks] sent you legal letter. See boy? Alan Ansen
⁶⁷
they will publish, but don't really want to give him advance. Carl also asking French major friend of mine to translate Genet's
Journal du Voleur
. Also Carl pushing Bill [Burroughs]'s book for a Wyn paperbound. That's OK it means money, and posterity will have it, same as if it was New Directions. But I will work on New Directions.

Yes Jack
On the Road
will be the First American Novel. By gum we going places. Prose in letter was great. California and Neal are great for you. But what amante shall we find for Neal to make him keep writing? If I came out there would he do it? No, I'm afraid I'd only annoy the pants offa you, boy. But rillly, I'm feeling so fine—and there's a huge Eastern snowfall on my doorstep in Paterson.

Yes yess, add, add addup. Finish the novel soon. We'll all be on kicks. Speaking winkwise, I believe you its the first modern novel.

Oh Lucien he's just newly married, that's all that's wrong with him aside from a slight case of being a congenital sourpuss. Love Lucien, anyway.

But what can be done with Hal [Chase]? Nobody even knows his address? How can I reach him? Tell me in detail—or have [Al] Hinkle write me details etc. I will compose a huge insane letter and send him it; he won't know what to think, so maybe he'll answer. He's not sick, he's just showing off. First thing Kind King Mind must do is dye his golden hair green.

Really this letter is silly.

Pretty poems on Melville and Whitman. I sent Van Doren our mutually typed Melville notes. Haven't talked to him since.

Young friend named Gregory Corso
⁶⁸
left for coast, didn't see him before he left, but you may run into him. Two years ago he used to watch Dusty [Moreland] undress through window from furnished room across the street. I introduced him. He was in love with her. He too's a poet. But Dusty won't marry me, I asked her? What can I do? But I'll present your petition too. Maybe she'll marry all three of us? Think of the great wedding night ball.

You must meet [William Carlos] Williams, he digs us, I'm giving him your books and will show him your letters. He's old, and not hip in our way, but he's innocence itself and picks up himself just like that.

Your abstraction is shore superior. Save the pastels. I incidentally knew it was yours minute I laid eyes in it. Like a signature.

I have been sleeping with all the girls around Columbia, from Barnard, I mean. I'm entering a huge transformation to passivity now. I don't know when it happened, I don't make love no more, I just lay back and let people blow me. (It don't work on Dusty though—never lay her no more). Send on your whale of a bitch and I'll see that it gets in print, or send it to Carl and he'll do the leg work, I'm getting too hincty to do that free anymore (except for total recalcitrants like Neal who don't know what they're missing by not farting in public.)

The only man alive who really writes like us at all is Faulkner.
Soldier's Pay
. 25¢ pocket book.

I didn't read about Moby Dick, send clipping. I have huge candid photos from Lucien's wedding [January 1952]. No, I'm shipping NMU [National Maritime Union] soon as I see Williams, as dishwasher on passenger ship, then after month being yeoman. Then come back and get ANALYZED. Yahh! Make Neal write me via wire recorder, you transcribe.

Whazzis 12 Adler?
⁶⁹
Whooz Ed. Roberts?

gone,

Allen

 

 

Jack Kerouac [San Francisco, California] to
Allen Ginsberg [n.p., Paterson, New Jersey?]

ca
. February 1952

 

Dear Allen:

Williams is right: the original impulse of the mind is in the “prose seed” or first wild draft of the poem, the “formal ode” is a dull suit covering the great exciting nude body of reality etc. I think these your great poems here but I think (also) your rooming house poems about the cockroach on the door and the growing old in the floor is just as great but mainly this is the—I'm trying to talk seriously about your work in a hurry . . . but no hurry. Death's head Dusty is great lil poem: “Sunset is greater this way, because steel is naked like naked thoughts unplanned but ored up from dark mind.” In fact the “blood” (remember) you later inserted, probably for carnal,—is not something that's “missing” from this poem but is the seed of another about sundown steels. I believe this and know my own mind on subject. Remember Van Doren talking about tightrope Shakespeare over the abyss, or that he was a balloon floating over it? I like “imagined purposes” in eternity. (Say, why haven't you commented on my great ink angel with the poem?) Your Metaphysics is worthy of Williams' quote and by God he must be a great man not only to “do this for you,” but to be so smart as to use pure lines like that at the head of his great next-extending epic
Paterson
of late-life flow towards eternity . . . Dostoevsky was the wildest writer in the world at 57; we're young punks. Is “Long Live the Spiderweb” spontaneous as presented or re-worked?

Listen, I love you, you knew that didn't you?—still you—fuck Lucien, he's my—he doesn't respond, he stepped on me but I don't know why and especially the times with all meaningless sadisms. But why do I say this? in a letter of critical mentions. “Negroes climbing around” is a supreme example of your funny vision of the world—also looking for that toilet—as if you were saying hm as you traversed spiderweb halls in long black pants, stroking your chin, among iron rings, covered with dust of big tears in the black rent curtain of the sky somewhere beyond . . oh hell, negroes climbing around is just like the place where those kids swim back O' the mills. Also it's like yr old vision of the negroes digging NY from a Harlem eminence in a park. Say, I have a gone line—a poem too: but never mind. (“Paranoia about a crash.” (say it out loud). The Trembling of the Veil is perfection itself; it reminds me of a poem
Richmond Hill
I wrote:

[five lines crossed out here and beside them written “Phooey”]

Don't show this note to Williams, he'll know I wrote it just so he could see it. The arms of the trees bending at once when the wind pushes them, is like Whitman for awe and suspense and like dewdrop flowerstems sunflowers and all your favorite Alice in Wonderland miracles of poesy. See, the value of your mind is in its spontaneity, it has no other. Considered thought is for existential generals who love battles anyway and for Spenglerian high late men who are all embroiled in squadrons of bureaucracy and expensive [?] and cuckoldry in midtown funny cocktail blahs. Please dig my closing lines of
On the Road
John has—every time I compliment you on a line I have to think of one of my own to draw a compliment in return from you, but be that as it may, don't go around thinking that I ain't the old boy still with these shit slingings in the page, who was it first fardeled you and threw crinnicks in your hair, when the—dig this: “ . . . at night now drove back, north, right out Insurgentes the way we come in, Ferrocarril Mexicano hunting his left hubcaps, in the dark, across the holy biblical plains by the first starlight the wise men made. Far across the dewy cacti the coyote crowed his oats with a long dog grin a burley sack hung from a nail, an icon flickered in the tree, the wines of repentance flowed in the stream. Bent over his wheel like a madman (Neal this is, driving back to NY), shirtless, hatless, the moon leering on his shoulder, the apex of the night sweeping back in a fast shroud, he unrolled his old word-joint by cracking the door over the bumps and [?] of night. Did he see any lights?” (late chapter of
On the Road
, in which dig Neal (Crafeen) as a traditional Irish hero.) Also, I further, commenting on his handsome snapshots, how his children will look at them. Our, his children will look at (those pictures) and say “My daddy was a strapping young man in 1950, he strutted down the street as cute as can be and for all a few troubles he has that Irish fortitude and strength—ah coffin eatest thou old strength for they meal, and throw worms?” (or “pass worms” which is best?)* How can the tragic children tell what it is their fathers killed, enjoyed and what joyed in and killed them to make them crop open like vegetable wind-falls in a bin . . . poor manure, man,” But that's enuf quotes, you won't appreciate them in these rough little letters, better on a big manuscript page. Ask Williams if you can what he thinks of that prose.

Please write often; join the MCS! [Marine Cooks and Stewards Union]—

Jack

 

* shit worms?

 

P.S. I haven't written Bill [Burroughs] yet—don't want Kells' [Elvins] wife to know my address.

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to
Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac
[n.p., San Francisco, California?]

New York
10:PM: Thursday Feb 15, 52

 

Dear Neal and Jack:

I am living in the same house as you saw on 15th St., Jack, but now upstairs in the garret. Last night I had my eyes closed sleeping (half asleep) and thinking about Neal's birthday, which led me to think of my own in 6 months—I will be 26 like Neal. It has been occurring to me often that years now seem shorter, more fast to fly. At 26 we are almost 30 actually, and I woke with a powerful knock of awareness at my heart, my eyes flew open, I saw time flying like an enormous bird. We are getting to our age of most power, our peak. I feel older and clearer than I ever did—though at the same time more irretrievable isolated in the huge dream of the world. I don't really see much future, since by now I should be more
connected
to outside things, like $ and society. Whatever I want, I still am not what I wanted to be, none of the many kinds of things I wanted to be—and perhaps will not. The opening of eyes goes on.

I will tell you about New York. Claude [Lucien Carr] was married at a huge party—enough of social details. Now he and C. [Cessa] live around the block from [Jerry] Newman's store—they drink and throw things at each other, just like always, only a little different since Claude thinks now that he always has to make up one way or the other. I see him every week. He says, “Why did Jack leave before the wedding without saying goodbye.” I say “He thought you were rejecting him.” He says, “Well, he sure thought right.” But he has asked me several times why you weren't there, and what did you think? He is just the same. He likes his father in law, old Von Harz was standing on his balcony a few doors down from Dusty's old apt. on a snowy day, surveying the street. Claude came down the street and threw a snowball at him, “right in the puss.” Old Van Harz said “Well you're feeling in high spirits but you could have broken the French window.” Claude then explains that Von Harz broke it himself a week before in rage, while tugging and pushing at it impatiently when it was stuck.

Burroughs has been writing. He is very lonely—write him, care of Kells, Turf Club, Mexico DF. His boy [Lewis] Marker left him temporarily on a visit to Florida, is to rejoin him in Ecuador any week. I've been calling Laughlin
⁷⁰
but no word yet. Still considering (seriously apparently) Bill says: “Meanwhile things seem kind of dreary around here. Several other people I like left about the same time. I want to get the case settled and clear out.” His kids have been claimed by respective grandparents. No word of Hal [Chase].

I saw [Bill] Garver
⁷¹
(did I see you since then, Jack?) who says Phil White killed himself in Tombs
⁷²
because he was up on three raps, tried to get out of it by stool pigeoning on an old
schmecker
who didn't sell to whores and kids only to respectable criminals. Thereby he got out on two raps. Last rap (non-narcotics) still hung him, was going to bring him to Rikers. But old
schmecker
and the boys were waiting for him at Rikers Island. So hung self in Tombs. Like tragic movie. Said Garver “I never thought he had much character. But what else could he do, he was washed up as a junkie in N.Y.” Said Burroughs (letter January 19) “He was so uncompromising and puritanical about stool pigeons. He used to say ‘I don't understand how a pigeon can live with himself.' I guess Phil couldn't after what he did. Even so I still haven't changed my opinion of Phil.”