Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (2 page)

Kerouac and Ginsberg have proved to be two of the most influential writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Kerouac's
On the Road
and Ginsberg's
Howl
are seminal works that have inspired innumerable readers, including many artists working well outside the field of literature, who cite these books as liberating and life changing. Kerouac's novels had a great impact on the way American writers write and helped shape the worldview of several generations. Ginsberg's poetry, his compelling public performances, and his role as an activist and teacher made him a cultural force for decades. The legacy of their writing and their lives continues to unfold, to such an extent that their place in history cannot yet be definitively assessed.

This selection makes a significant contribution to both their bodies of work, and to the understanding of that work. Two-thirds of these letters have not been published before. The Ginsberg-Kerouac friendship was the pivotal axis for the literary movement and cultural construct that became known as the Beat Generation and was essential to both men throughout their adult, professional-writing lives. Their unique quarter-century of correspondence offers passionate self-portraits, a vivid record of the cultural scene they helped create, key insights into the literary explorations at the core of the Beat movement, a unique chronicle of their mutually encouraged spiritual explorations, and a moving record of a deep, personal friendship.

That friendship began when Ginsberg was an undergraduate at Columbia University in 1944 and their correspondence commenced the same year. The letters record a long, intense conversation, one that continued, with varying periods of frequency and intensity, until shortly before Kerouac's death in 1969.

Both men were committed, from early on, to a life in literature; and their letters were an important workshop in which their ever-evolving ideas were shared and endlessly debated. Whether they were in agreement or following divergent strands of thought, they wrote with great open spirit to one another in trust. In their letters, Ginsberg and Kerouac emerge first and foremost as writers of artistic passion, innovation, and genius. Both their careers involved endless struggle, hard work, and sacrifice to enact their literary visions; and each man provided a steadfast reference point for the other in times good and bad. Their correspondence illuminates both their convergences and their conflicts as writers. They shared an uncanny and remarkable versatility as word “sketchers,” both devoted to fully exploring writing as disciplined “spontaneous thought.” Ginsberg's relentless support and encouragement helped Kerouac profoundly. Ginsberg's social skills and irrepressible efforts to connect people to one another were important in promoting the very idea of a Beat Generation. Kerouac's innovations as a writer were central to Ginsberg's work. As Ginsberg once noted, “My own poetry's always been modeled on Kerouac's practice of tracing his mind's thoughts and sounds directly on the page.”

“Friendship is love without his wings,” Lord Byron wrote. Surely he was wrong, as this book is evidence of a lifelong friendship that was love with wings. These two friends soared to the heights in their correspondence as the letters flew back and forth. Sometimes they wrote so eagerly to each other that their missives crossed in midflight. The letters were an essential part of their work, and often the vehicle through which that work evolved. Phrases were shared and pondered, books recommended, writers and friends analyzed, poems exchanged, and ideas tried out, their responses to each other helping to determine the next step forward. There is madness here and mad joy, play and suffering and erudition, as well as daily life strategy, money struggle, and detailed logistical planning to coordinate meetings and events. They kept track of friends and forwarded each other letters by those friends, precious in those prephotocopy days when the original was often the only copy.

Some of their letters are stunningly extensive single-spaced epics, longer than published stories or articles. There are aerogrammes from afar, words jammed to the edges, filling every inch, and handwritten letters on lined pages, tiny notebook sheets, old letterhead. Add-ons are scrawled on envelopes, and sometimes-lengthy postscripts tucked in. There is an ongoing attention to publishing strategies, the painful year-after-year efforts to get their work—and the work of their friends as well—into print. There are agents and editors and publishers to discuss, anger and frustration to share, new directions, renewed resolve, despair. There are arguments, and moving past those and underlying all across the years, an oft-voiced mutual appreciation and affection. “Cher Breton,” Allen would write. “Jackiboo,” “Mon cherami Jean,” “Kind King Mind,” and “Ghost.” “Cher Alain,” Jack would begin, “Cher jeune singe,” “Alleyboo,” “Irwin,” “Old Bean.”

When Kerouac's attention turned to Buddhist thought, he diligently sought to engage Ginsberg's interest as well, taking copious notes on his extensive reading and enthusiastically sharing them, instructing and urging. Eventually Kerouac turned back away from his practice, but Ginsberg embraced Tibetan Buddhism and practiced seriously for decades. His memorial service was held in a Manhattan temple. The origins of both men's explorations of Buddhism are in these letters.

The attention success brought Kerouac was not his friend. He recoiled from much of the sixties counterculture and, in his final years, pulled back into himself. Ginsberg fully embraced the era, assuming a unique role by bringing art and politics together. The correspondence between them continued during the Sixties, but only sporadically. The occasional phone call became the main emotional link sustaining their bond. By the time Kerouac died, in 1969, Ginsberg was just hitting his stride, and followed through in every aspect of his work for the next thirty years.

A few years after Jack Kerouac died, Allen Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman cofounded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. While teaching there one summer, Ginsberg asked Jason Shinder, his student assistant at the time, to help him collect copies of all the correspondence between himself and Kerouac. Fortunately, both Ginsberg and Kerouac were mindful of posterity and had organized and saved nearly everything. By that time, most of their letters were already in the collections of two great research libraries: Kerouac's at the Columbia University Library, Ginsberg's at the University of Texas. It was Ginsberg's hope that someday a book of their letters might be published, but once the mountain of material had been gathered, it was clear that the job of transcribing everything was overwhelming. Nothing much was done for the next thirty years.

In editing this book, we began with nearly three hundred letters. Every one has qualities in its favor, and it would have been satisfying to simply include them all, but this was impractical. In the end we included two-thirds—the best. Our goal was to publish as many strong letters as possible, and toward that end we let the last few years of sporadic correspondence go. Those letters were mere supplements to person-to-person conversation. The book ends on a high note, with a spirited exchange between the old friends several years before Kerouac's voice fell silent.

For the most part we included entire letters, but on a few occasions judiciously cut portions, indicating these by ellipses within square brackets [ . . . ]. Both Ginsberg and Kerouac occasionally used ellipses in the letters themselves as a form of spacing, and these have usually been preserved, but square brackets indicate deletions to the text. Sometimes postscripts were eliminated if they had nothing to do with the flow of the letter and were inessential; often these were inquiries about friends, or directions, or greetings to pass along to other people. Both writers sometimes included poems and texts with their letters, and some of these have been left out.

Assigning precise dates to some of the letters has been problematic. Where the exact dates were not known, the editors have made educated guesses, and those approximate dates are noted by brackets, as are corrections to the authors' own dating, as in the case where a previous year is mistakenly used out of habit for several months into the new year. In general, simple spelling mistakes were corrected unless it was obvious or likely that incorrect spelling was deliberately creative—“eyedea” for instance, and “mustav.” Some errors were made by the authors consistently, as in Ginsberg's use of “Caroline” for “Carolyn,” and “Elyse” for “Elise,” and those are noted the first time in each letter and corrected thereafter. Other errors are more variable. Kerouac might use
On the Road
in one sentence and
On The Road
in the next. The city in Morocco might appear as Tanger, Tangier, Tangiers, or even Tangers, with little concern for consistency.

Ginsberg's handwriting can be particularly difficult to decipher, and some of Kerouac's both-sided letters have extreme show-through, making it hard to read every word, even with the aid of a magnifying glass. Therefore, in instances where the editors were making a well-calculated guess regarding a particular word, the word is included in brackets, [thus]. Similarly, where a word or passage is completely illegible it is indicated by [?].

Footnotes have been added in order to help identify people and events that might not be widely familiar, but the editors have tried to keep footnotes to a minimum, and we refer readers to their own reference sources. The life stories of Kerouac and Ginsberg have been well told in biographies. In this volume, the Editors' Notes, which appear throughout the text, are meant as stepping stones to bridge the reader across gaps in chronology, or to fill in missing context for a letter. The storytelling is in the letters, and we leave it to the reader to discover it.

The editors, Bill Morgan for the Ginsberg Estate and David Stanford for the Kerouac Estate, wish to thank the following:

The Allen Ginsberg Trust; trustees Bob Rosenthal and Andrew Wylie, and a special note of thanks to Peter Hale, who really is the workhorse of the Ginsberg world. Steven Taylor kindly made suggestions to the final manuscript. Judy Matz as always was the unsung hero of the editing process.

The Wylie Agency: in particular Allen Ginsberg's agent, Jeff Posternak.

The Estate of Jack Kerouac; John Sampas, executor, with a special note of appreciation for John's many years steadfastly guiding the continued unfolding of Kerouac's work, and ensuring the preservation of his writing for future generations.

Sterling Lord Literistic; in particular Kerouac's longtime agent Sterling Lord, with whom it is always an elegant pleasure to work—and of whom Kerouac said, “The Lord is my agent, I shall not want.”

Penguin USA, specifically Viking-Penguin, and even more specifically our editor Paul Slovak, with deep gratitude for his longtime furthering of Kerouac's canon at the house formerly known as The Viking Press, where he and David Stanford burned the midnight oil together for many years in happy hardworking camaraderie. Also big thanks to veteran wordherder Beena Kamlani, whose painstaking labors on other books by Kerouac and Ginsberg made her the ideal colleague for this project.

The following libraries: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin; Butler Library, Department of Special Collections, Columbia University; and Green Library, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University.

We would like to honor the memory of editor, writer, and poet Jason Shinder, who worked on this project in its earliest stages. When interest in bringing it to fruition was revived, he signed on to coedit on behalf of the Ginsberg Estate. His untimely death deprived him of that opportunity. In drawing on notes from the cowritten book proposal, we have undoubtedly incorporated some of his thoughts into the editors' introduction. We acknowledge his contribution, and, as fellow editors, we salute him.

David Stanford offers ever-thanks to the divine Therese Devine Stanford, his beloved delightful wife, ally, sweetheart, and friend.

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to
Jack Kerouac [Bronx County Jail, New York]

ca.
mid-August 1944

 

Cher Jacques: on the subway:

I've been escorting
la belle dame sans mercip
[Edie Parker
¹
] around all morning—first to Louise's,
²
now to jail. I haven't a permit, so I won't visit you.

I saw her carry
Dead Souls
to you yesterday—I didn't know you were reading it (she said you'd started it). We (Celine [Young
³
]
et moi
), took it out of the college library for Lucien [Carr], too. Anyway, and to get to the point: Good! That book is my family Bible (aside from the
Arabian Nights
)—it has all the melancholy grandeur of modder Rovshia [Mother Russia], all the borscht and caviar that bubbles in the veins of the Slav, all the ethereal emptiness of that priceless possession, the Russian soul. I have a good critical book on it home—I'll send it to you (or, I hope, give it to you) when you're finished with the book. The devil in Gogol is the Daemon Mediocrity, I'm sure you'll therefore appreciate it. Anyway, I'll finish some other time.