Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (39 page)

As for anti-Semitism on the SP, yes, the Okies on that railroad are anti-Semites, whatever that means in California.

Al Hink [Hinkle] you shouldn't encourage on his really simple-minded and ignorant commie kick, you shouldn't be such a fool Burroughsian liberal saying he really represents good old American dissent—“traditional American dissent” you called it, we don't call 18th Century Toryism, siding with the national military enemy, a “healthy dissent,” it's really treason against the government and the army, what else? Let Al go to Russia if he can git there. Thomas Paine was not a Tory. [ . . . ]

I got Cowley talkin for me now—Arabelle Porter of
New World Writing
just bought Jazz Excerpts (of Neal and I digging Folsom St. Little Harlem, Jackson's Nook, and Anita O'Days nightclub on North Clark St. in Chi) (with things from
Vision of Neal
sneaked in, like “Lester is like the river, it starts in near Butte Montana at a place call'd Three Forks, comes balling down etc. etc.) (you know, one of the top passages of
Visions of Neal
, which at last can see light in print in
New World
within a year)—It was Cowley helped me, so I wrote and thank'd Cowley, and he wrote back and said “Maybe a publisher will take
On the Road
now” and he said “Show Arabelle Porter the chapter now about the Mexican girl in San Joaquin valley in the cotton tent”—So maybe you don't have to show me to Rexroth but I don't wanta get hungup on mail, is it because I'm lazy? or canny?) (and why should I be canny, I'm not a businessman)—I changed the title to
Beat Generation
of
On the Road
, hoping to sell it, and also I see “beatitude” in “beat” now than ever before, which might make it an international word understood in French, Spanish, most romance langues, just think of “be-at”—“be-at-itude”—and “beat” belongs to me as far I can see—(for use as title of book)—Little Shit Littlebrown Seymour Lawrence had all the half of 1954 and kept telling my agent it looked very good and finally it was rejected they say by one editor of LB altho accepted by twelve people elsewhere (on
Atlantic Monthly
board for some reason of merger) and to top it little shit Seymour writes me another, yet still another, severe note about “Craft” (the first one having come from rejection of Death of the Father George Martin, which everybody knows is a masterpiece and a classic chapter)—the nerve of that little queen. I tell you I get so mad-a-a-a-d! Am I good enuf though for good old soul goodman Malcolm Cowley to champion me?—Oh yes ps.s.s. I got $120 for the story, imagine. That's my first pay since 1950. No since 1953. Well Viking can still take it if they want it and make their $250 strait, and same with Wyn.

[ . . . ]

Maybe we should write no more letters but have absolute trust in each other till we meet. He who knows does not speak.

Incidentally I've lost my taste for booze, and don't hardly drink no more. You'll see. It's merely a matter of my
taste
changing again. Like no-smoke. Forc'd to it . . . I'm too old, I'm 33, to stay up all night drinking . . .

Love for you in Coast? Find a nice MG girl on Russian Hill, make it with the yacthing set, yatching set, Buddha boy . . . if you can, it's best for you . . . I can see you in hornrimmed glasses, bermuda shorts, and camera around shoulder at Yosemite. The queers of Remo [bar] as you know are in the Black Cat there, on Columbus at Montgomery.

[ . . . ]

I'm waiting till I see you again cause I'm not coming to California by a long shot, if anything I'm going nowhere . . . I have a little plan but my plans are always so poor . . . but I'll try it, tell you later . . . I hope to see Bill tho, he'll surely stop in New York. Maybe you and Bill should get yourselves a house in Mexico City, only cost $200 or $300 down and you have six or seven rooms and big teas at which Paul Bowles is not invited, and start your publishing house in an empty room upstairs. Both of you work and save for this, in Calif. Bill could work in a cannery maybe, hor hor hor.

What a magnificent letter I just got from him, one sentence says “He (Paul Bowles Hobbes) invites the dreariest queens in Tangiers to tea, but has never invited me, which, seeing how small the town is, amounts to a deliberate affront”—

and

“I can't help but feeling that you are going too far with your absolute chastity. Besides, mast'ion [masturbation] is not chastity, it is just a way of sidestepping the issue without even approaching the solution. Remember, Jack, I studied and practiced Buddhism in my usual sloppy way to be sure. The conclusion I arrived at, and I make no claims to speak from a state of enlightenment, but merely to have attempted the journey, as always, with inadequate equipment and knowledge,—like one of my South American expeditions, falling into every possible accident and error, losing my gear and my way, shivering in the cosmic winds on a bare mountain slope above life line, chilled to the blood-making marrow with final despair of aloneness: What am I doing here a broken eccentric? a Bowery Evangelist, reading books on Theosophy in the public library, (An old tin trunk full of notes in my cold water, East Side flat) imagining myself a Secret World Controller in Telepathic Contact with Tibetan Adepts?—Could he ever
see
the merciless, cold,
facts
on some winter night sitting in the operation room white glare of a cafeteria—NO SMOKING PLEASE”—(You can't say nothin but trash, blues nigger new york song locally)—(me)—Bill:—“NO SMOKING PLEASE—
See the facts and himself
, an old man with the wasted years behind, and what ahead having seen The Facts? A trunk full of notes to dump in a Henry Street lot? . . . so my conclusion was that Buddhism is only for the West to
study
as
history
, that it is a subject for
under standing
, and Yoga, can profitably be practiced to that end. But it is not, for the West, An Answer, not A Solution. WE must learn by acting, experiencing, and living, that is, above all by Love and by Suffering. A man who uses Buddhism or any other instrument to remove love from his being in order to avoid suffering, has committed, in my mind, a sacrilege comparable to castration.” (ya can't castrate tathagatas) (castrate the uncastratable? the invisible love?) (visible enuf when you open your eyes and look) (izzasso?) (I have my own doubts, you see, I make these little jokes) “You were given the power to love, in order to use it, no matter what pain it may cause you.” (wow) “Buddhism, frequently amounts to a form of psychic junk . . . I may add that I have seen nothing from those California Vedantists but a lot of horse shit, and I denounce them without cavil, as a pack of frauds.” “Convinced of their own line to be sure, thereby adding self deception to their other failings. In short a sorry bunch of psychic retreaters from the dubious human journey. Because if there is one thing I feel sure of it is this: that human life has
direction
.”

But I dear Allen say, no direction in the void.

Also Bill says, for choice prose see this, “KiKi is slowly denuding me of my clothes. He enjoys them so much and I care so little.” Talk about DeCharlus!
¹⁰⁰

Okay, Allen, goodbye.

Jean-Louis

 

Extra p.s. Cowley says he mentions me twice in last chapter of his new book in October.

And incidentally p.s. I changed my writing name to Jean-Louis.

JAZZ EXCERPTS by JEAN-LOUIS Remember Incogniteau?

 

 

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

September 5, 1954

Sept. 5—Sunday 10:30 PM
554 Broadway, Room 3
Hotel Marconi, S.F. Cal.

 

Cher Jean-Louis Le Brie:

Thank you for your letters, all so kind, all so sweet to get, such a pleasure that tho it's a waste of time etc. I get more kicks from reading them than almost anything else,—but don't write if not so set up, natch. Hard to write with burn-blister on thumb (of pen hand) and no typewriter. Well: what has happened out here. [ . . . ] Carolyn caught me and Neal—screamed,—she is I think a charnel—yelled,—reversed her original hypocrisy—was it?—or I shouldn't maybe judge—but it was not comic, the intensity of insult and horror and even I think spite, indignation, etc. (She burst into my room one 4 AM at the house) (though you see I was hiding nothing—told her in fact—it was O.K.'d—but all the details are not for here can't write fast enough) but anyway a horrible scene—ordered me gone—Neal went blank, ran out to work—I sat and faced her. She talked and I thought her face waxed green with evil. “You've always been in my way ever since Denver—your letters have always been an insult—you're trying to come between us” and more, horrible—such force, Celinish, I went cold with horror—felt
steeped
in evil. They hate each other, charnels to each other she and Neal. But I can't picture it to you as I really see it, no Levinsky sacerdotal-ism involved. I was glad to get away. So took twenty dollars and went up to Frisco to the above address—(I had said nothing back to her—went blank with a kind of hopeless feeling she was mad—though tried to hold with some kind of in-sad sight to it all—I didn't come to screw her up) and here moved into [Al] Sublette's hotel (he moved to the Marconi up a few blocks Broadway can see Vesuvios from his window) and pounded pavements madly. Got a job in market research, $55 a week, 9-5 next month—on Montgomery financial street—found a girl the first night—a
great
new girl who digs me, I dig—twenty-two, young,
hip
(ex-singer big buddy of [Dave] Brubeck, knows all the colored cats, ex-hipster girl)
pretty
in a real chic classy way,
straight
—she works in high teacup emporium store writing advertising—digs me—she has a wild mind, finer than
any
girl I met—really—a real treasure—and such a lovely face—so
fine
a pretty face—young life in her—and real sharp agenbite of inwit thoughts like Lucien—Thos. Hardy. So have been seeing her for a week we talk and neck and will make it sure—
but
she has a kid (married at eighteen, kid four years old) used to sing in San Jose roadhouses and knows Mrs. Green [marijuana], etc. What a doll.
And
she's not a flip thank god. Not a stupid square in any way but
not
a flip. Sheila Williams. She tried to get me a crazy job at store the first nite I knew her—instant digging each other—how wild and great. O well, to see how this proceeds—nothing ugly can happen anyway thank god, she's too fine—she dug Sublette, etc. But we wander around alone and sit and drink coffee at her apt. and talk—and she digs the
really
good lines of my poetry, not just generally digs, but digs the
specific
tricks—well enough.

So to continue otherwise: I live in the Marconi hotel—run by dykes—first night they say to me—“here's yr. key. You want to have anybody in your room go ahead and have a ball we're drunk all night ourselves”—and they are. Middle size room $6.00 carpet soft on floor privacy, Sublette upstairs and—horrors! Last Friday night Sheila takes me to big party of nowhere engineers on Telegraph Hill. I come home 4:30 AM meet Sublette, and Cosmo (a weird egotistic small poet smart aleck) go and get coffee, the cops look at us, search us, find white powder on Cosmo. To jail, all night, my first week here, as a vagrant (tho I have $18.00 and a job for Monday to come and a room and party suit on) in tank, me and Sublette horrified (I had a pipe in my room but they didn't look) but actually great kicks—set free the next day, Cosmo doesn't get out for 4 days—the powder was foot powder not junk all along—he kept telling them but didn't believe and had it analyzed and finally let him go. So Bill better be careful.

[ . . . ]

I at last enclose
Siesta In Xbalba
. It won't be finished (I won't quit trying to add) for a while but this is the best I can do with it after four months—five months. The handwritten part still doesn't get a vision of Europe like I hope for but just mentions it and signs off. Show this to Lucien maybe and Cowley maybe? if you dig it—maybe it's too revised and formal now.

Yes, Rexroth was only an idea just in case nothing else was happening, Cowley much better. By the way the Ansen type poet round here name of Robert Duncan, friend of Pound, runs a crappy tho sincere Pound type poetry circle here part of S.F. College came to my room and saw a typed copy of your “Essentials” of Prose (remember, you wrote it down on E. 7th St.) and
dug
it (strangely particularly the part of no revision and the general conception of spontaneity) and asked to borrow it to make a copy and wanted your address and wanted to know who you were etc. Well he's a funny guy, queer, his poetry is all crazy and surrealist and he's a friend of Lamantia and his poetry also is no good because too aesthetically hung up all about his sensibility faced with the precise tone of his piddle—Light, etc.—that's the subject matter—but it's all right he's nice a curious person, talks too much in front of his young Corso students.

Neal
—he played chess with Dick Woods and was blind, etc. except in a weird way very nice to me, but he is
mad
—the thing is Jack he really is suffering some incipient insanity—the charnel Carolyn, the frantic sex—now it is terrible pathetic mad rushing around and can't even
make
it—getting caught masturbating by his conductor—fucking seventy year old spiritualist woman in S.J. [San Jose]—the crackpot Cayce which he holds on to like some doctrine in an asylum—half serious obsession—I see him driving now frantic with empty hatreds of other drivers on Bloody Bayshore—he hates Carolyn I think—but nowhere else to go—no way out of the three children R.R. After I left they both went and took (o comedy horror) the Rorschach Ink Blot Test (which is maybe more or less accurate in determining degree of clinical insanity if you believe in the word, which I don't for me and you, but sort of do now for Neal) and he told me, jumbled, four conclusions: 1). sexually sadistic 2). pre-psychotic 3). “delusive thought system” 4). intense anxiety prone. Well as to number 3 that means if anything he has some kind of mad “
Cayce
—sex—driving—T”—system which is operating independently sort of convulsively compulsively running him around a kind of rat race. He don't write no more “I was writing about sex and you dig it's sinful, I know etc.” he says. And Carolyn agrees “What good is that sort of thing, you call that art? It's just dirt.” I tell you that household is—and so much gold in trash now, the
chess
, maniacal. He won't talk to me, except in a sort of dissociated way. Comes to my room in Frisco gets in bed and plays with self. You know how I dig sex my way any kind but there's something wrong in the total sense of masturbatory insistence and franticness of that. He says generally “I have no feelings—never had.” I mean we ball as ever still but read on. His stomach is bad—nausea at meals, maybe ulcers. His suffering is—well not suffering, his
pain
or dissociation from contact or good sweet kicks is more and more autonomous, more overloaded, heavy. He sees it, no way out for him he says once in a while, drives faster. I do all I can to make it with him—as friend I mean,—I don't really care about the cock—it seems too dislocated for that. (I mean this judgment does not come from morbid lusting turning sour exactly.) Would be willing to take vows of leave him alone etc. if he only would be sweet and care-ful again and open to gentle kicks and images and poetry and digging things of all natures—and no time for kicks on jazz—he's too busy—Chess. Or if we did go it would be a ragged fury of being too high driving too fast, all too hot and horrible. Well he and I love each other, it's all
there
no doubt, but everything seems
impossible
as far as any real contact and natural enjoyment. He really gets no kicks from me as Allen or Levinsky or poet or old memory friend. I mean he does and I too from him but it's so fast it's unreal and most of the time driven into the background grim reality nothingnesses that happen. As for Carolyn, I know or imagine she has suffered as wife perhaps to justify any way she is now but I have strong impression she's a kind of death—she doesn't dig new things (statues or paintings when pointed out)—I mean she has no active curiosity or aesthetic or kicks interests and lives by this ruinous single track idea of running the family according to her ideas strictly, ideas which are mad copies of
House Beautiful
and are really nowhere in addition to being unreal on account of the horror of the house and the need for some real force of compassion or insight or love or Tao, or whatever. Maybe it's impossible. She's a hysteric type—that is, shifting layers of dishonesty which I first didn't dig but do so now. Will take it or leave it, it is only my reaction to the general scene. I felt relieved to get out to poverty—work worries free of the mad hassle of anxiety at the house, alone in Frisco. And if I feel relieved to get out of a situation with Neal there must be something screwy somewhere. I know what I was doing there with Neal sounds on the surface like a monstrous thing, as Carolyn with some justice suddenly exploded out with, but that isn't the cause of their woes, she forbade me by the way to ever see him again. I have horror of such insensitivity to the total situation
insisted
on as the
right
, self righteous
final
eternal etc. Oh well enuf of this it is too nasty and I can't give the picture as I saw it. But I mean I felt evil around me—her vehemence and the feeling of horror I had reminded me of moments in the N.J. hospital when my mother was seized by a fit of frenzied insistent accusation and yelled at me that I was a spy. If you remember the story I told you about the sense of finality and absolute tired despair and hopeless futility I felt when at age fourteen I took my mother on a mad horrible trip to Lakewood where I left her to fall apart in paranoiac fear with shoe in hand surrounded by cops in a drugstore. I felt the same tired inevitability and impossibility of fact and mad horror listening to Carolyn, and afterward—tired exhausted feeling in the back, want to go off somewhere else from the impossible
end
of communication and sleep it off. That's disappeared since I've been here running around, but it hasn't disappeared in San Jose, for Neal who lives in hell and for her who lives in hell, and I guess the children.