Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (63 page)

Dear Buddy Gregory . . . Thank you for beautiful Buddha postcard, dig the monks, the one young monk so cool and free that he can stand in the street and do nothing but gaze at his reflection in streetpuddle . . . I dig you sending me that. I announced you in NY, I hope somebody heard, well
Gasoline
is coming out so you're in . . . I see now, tho, that fame makes you stop writing, why should a man stop and sketch a railyard when he has to make a publicity appointment? So I am quitting all publicity appointments from now on, including
Life
and all that shit. If they want my picture they have to chase me down the street. Big new years eve party. Jay Landesman (this for Allen too) will pay big money for poetry readings at the Crystal Palace in St. Louis. You and Allen can actually make a big living now just touring the country and reading. Good for both of you, but I read no more. I get too drunk. I even burst into the New School, as asked, a read to bunch of seminar squares. Saw Alene [Lee], who is very mean now. She lives at 5 Jones. Saw [Stanley] Gould who is great guy. See Anton [Rosenberg] all the time. I wore crucifix around my neck, stuck in shirt, while reading in club. Beware of fame, poems will become
non sequitur
. I am worried about myself now, I feel that poems aren't as important as writing a letter to my publishers, that's bad. Allen, when is Peter coming back? It was humanly impossible for me to go see Laff. Is Bill now with you in Paris? give me news of Bill, and Ansen. Has Holmes come to see you. What an enormous number . . . and to think that this is going on in all directions of the universe, this multiplicity of Angels which was all once ONE ANGEL.

Write, here, Florida. Love

Yes, love

Jack

 

P.S. Big article about Zen in new
Mademoiselle
quotes from
Howl
.

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., Orlando, Florida?]

Jan 11, 1957 [
sic
: 1958]
9 Rue Git Le Coeur
Paris 6, France

 

Dear Jack:

Wrote you to NYC about five days ago and received your aerogram today, I guess you've not yet received my letter, 'twas long, full of instructions about nonexistent money and gloomy manuscripts. Well February's fine by me for money, I'm going to spread out use of it for months anyway, it's the last assets I got for the moment (barring happy fortune of
Esquire
publishing “Green Auto” which is Tank Dieu doubtful anyway). However I'm broke now and don't have enough money to get through this month, the grocer ask't me today when I pay my four day old small milk and eggs bill. I need at least 20 or $25 to see me through the end of the month—please send that airmail fast if it's at all possible—I really be starving otherwise. I've used all other dribbles of ready cash, hawked my book and
Evergreens
in various bookstores, spent my Xmas $15 family money sent me and am down to stamp money for this and one last lugubrious letter to Bill saying when's he arriving and send me some Tangerian Francs if he has any. So send me now please enough to get thru till February—don't need much, just food money—I had thought you were sending loot January and getting royalties January as of letter some months back and so your new arrangements catch me short. Don't be mad by this dunning letter.

Bill no write, I don't know what he'll do, he's supposed to show up this month, I reserved a rare cheap hard-to-get room for him in this great hotel—only $25 a month—and wrote him last week that everything was clear, but silence from Tangiers. Maybe he's incestuously miffed, Peter still being here waiting for government to ship him home. He'll probably show up February.

Government called Peter last nite to say they would ship him home this coming week—probably the 17th he leaves and be in NY before end of the month. Too bad you didn't have his two poems to read in Village they would have been the final naive bug of all dark-suited Manhattan. He'll send them soon. We got letter from Laf, everything's mad at cottage but everybody still hanging on waiting for him to swoop down angelic on wings across oceans and save everybody there. His long lost father even showed up home and had great manly talk with Lafcadio who liked him.

Oh, Ferlinghetti! I don't know what to do, I'll write him another letter. He resists other people's advice tho, would never take my word on Gary [Snyder] and Phil [Whalen] and I suspect is suspicious about Burroughs too. Well, we'll keep trying. He hasn't written me about your book tho McClure has, thought it was greatest long poem since
Paradise Lost
—he read it thru. Sooner or later.

As related in last letter: What's with Don Allen's reaction to
Interzone
? Have him send me
Queer
and
Yage
to try publish first thru Olympia which won't publish
Interzone
but wants to see
Queer
and
Yage
, that's a beginning anyway. And fine he should send
Interzone
complete to Ferlinghetti.

I saw the Gold piece, not the later Wilbur, and many others, got all worked up one day on T and almost wrote huge manifesto of nonsense but it's all transient and illusory aftereffects of writing and not writing itself, so decided to shut up. Maybe someday later if I write something by divine accident which applies—but these people are filled with the worst bullshit and nonsense, it's almost unbelievable how unhip and what bad artists they are. It's all off the point. No pay care what people saying; important thing about it all (the publicity) that we'd have chance to sow our dreams in market and lots of souls will read and see without doubt—those who have doubts have doubts what can you do? Un-doubt them and the whole civilization in one year?—how many literary sputniks necessary—we just keep sending up one a year. . . . Read all your lovely gossip of Lamantia (he writing too?) and Gary and various unknown Garens
¹³⁴
and [Lloyd] Reynolds and [Howard] Harts I guess I'll have ball when I get back.

I'm trying to go to England February, stay free with [Thomas] Parkinson and meet some English hipsters there, see fogs and make BBC paid reading (says Parkinson but I won't censor no more so doubt it)—I had dreams of London last week. Gregory still in Frankfort, flipped he writes in front of Army red tape on selling encyclopedias and is only visiting museums and conning poetic Germans, maybe be back soon. I know [Al] Leslie and [Miles] Forst. [Chris] MacClaine and SF bullshit will die a natural death and Rexroth's cornier remarks also, so no need replying there any more than Gold, etc. Let works speak, they speak. I had long dry period chasing editors in NY and slowly coming out. No Holmes yet. Send loot.

Love All

Allen

 

You can transmit loot easiest by personal check. If no one around has checks, send cash, my father does, it arrives.

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Orlando, Florida] to
Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France]

January 16, 1958

 

Dear Allen:

Alas, you'd a got this money three days earlier but for an ankle that prevented me from walking to the bank, some kind of swollen rheumatism, and no one to drive me. I hope now you'll have a great time, next three months. Please don't blow your substance on fools and parasites, but try to enjoy Paris nice now. Take long walks with Bill. I just got paid by Vanguard nightclub thus this loot. Germany advance just came in, this is what I'm sending. I will be in Paris this summer unless Hollywood calls me to go work on the script if they take the book which looks extremely likely now, I just got big letter from producer Jerry Wald at 20th Century, he wants to make big melodramatic changes in format but his ideas aren't too bad and besides I want to get rich so I can make my own movies with Robert Frank later.
BMR
[
Black Mountain Review
] is out with Bill's
Yage
in it, looks great. Your “America”, what is this kind of addition to America you pasted on? . . . Anyway I only told Hollywood one rule: no brutality in my movie. I really told them sumptin. “The secret of the beat generation, you wouldn't kill anybody even if you were ordered to (by a commander or sumptin.)” I know I wouldn't. Jerry Wald seems to see
On the Road
like a kind of Wild Ones brutal bit. But it ain't as bad as I make it sound. I want to dig Hollywood (as scenarist, and sitting next to directors on set) so I can write big final Hollywood novel of all time. Otherwise, if things go slow, I will be in Paris this summer. Is Bill with you yet? Is Peter really coming NY? Did Grego run away to Frankfurt because of those bad checks? I'm going to order
Gasoline
from Ferling and read it. This is big year of Zen on Madison Avenue, Alan Watts the big hero (the wisdom of insecurity, his new book, big hit among executives of security) . . . so we also come in now . . . but in my
Dharma Bums
new novel I do make the distinction between “Zen” and original Mahayana Buddhism. Well, many things to say and do, write me when you can, please notify me if you got money okay, and I write back big letters answering all your questions (ask some, I probably answer em all)

Jean Louis

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Orlando, Florida] to
Allen Ginsberg [Paris, France]

January 21, 1958

 

Dear Allen:

Your writing is not fucked up, never was, I mean technically, technically you're probably the best writer in the world . . . it's only your depressing ideas, when I feel happy and pure from weeks of studying sutras and praying suddenly I open one of your letters (sometimes) and feel a nameless depression, as tho black scum over my lucid bowl. Well you know you ARE a black blob so sorrow . . . but no, don't forget I love you, but I'm afraid of you now, and for you, such depression. Why, for instance, well it's none of my business, but why don't you ignore war, ignore politics, ignore samsara injust fuckups, they're endless . . . why is Chiang Kai Shek worse than Mao? and why shouldn't a saint walk thru the white house someday? Why are you so depressed, angel? so what, rhinestone autos from Detroit, there are rhinestone buyers and blueberry spies. Chaplin was just as bugged with “America” as U.S. with him, a double hatred . . . and when the universe disappears no movie can stick in God's throat because God is nothing (thank God, go ahead, thank God for that!) Money is money, why shriek at money (especially now that I'm going to be rich.) Allen, cool it. Rid thee of thy wrath, go lamby, isn't it a better thing to do in eternity to leave everybody alone good and evil alike and just pile along glad? Aha, our old 1946 argument.

Just got this note from Ferlinghetti: “Thanx for sending Burroughs sample. Would like to read more and will write Don Allen for it tho I doubt there will be much left for me by the time Grove and ND are thru wid it . . . Where is Allen? no word.”

Marlon Brando doesn't want me or Sterling to sell
Road
without giving him a chance to bid, that's the news on movie.

In two weeks I going to NY put down payment on a house and be near city for all this sixnix. Way out in L.I. [Long Island], like fifty miles or more. Lucien go with me drive around . . . looks like I'll be able to go to Paris see you and Bill this summer, if movie is sold and I have my trust fund established, we can all travel on that money, free money (interest). I'd like to repay Bill a little for his many kindnesses in the past including that last importuning steak in Tangiers the night I should av ordered spaghetti. Trust fund will be in my mother's name and she mail me loot. This is wiser than you think (considering Donlins and Neals).

If Peter is still there, give him my warmest love and I mean it. Your description of Gregory going to Germany is amazing! I know what, Allen, you must write prose masterpiece now and make a million: write a big VISIONS OF GREGORY, call it something else, Joyce Glassman is going to write a big VISIONS OF ELISE just for me (then publish it later as is, tho she doesn't believe it) . . . Give my love to Joy [Ungerer], tell her I want to kiss her everywhere soon's I see her, tell her I'm free. In NY somehow somewhere somebody stole my copy of Gregory's use use use use poem, tho I may find it later* (*Could Lamantia do that? for secret kicks?—or did I just misplace it? Tell Greg—) . . . But if you write prose you can make living, like me, and don't tell me you can't, your prose letters are the best I've ever seen, so come on. We'll, I'll definitely get a tape recorder, and you tell me long stories of everything that happened. I'll find some way to get you loot. But don't get hungup on bitter thoughts, and don't ever get mad at me permanent. Carl Solomon was out with someone in a bar in NY three weeks ago, I hear . . . all I know. Secret fellow in shadows of vanguard who dug me was, yes, Lucien . . . but also others, like a young kid wrote big poems about it, and many others. I can't understand
SRL
[
Saturday Review of Literature
] saying I “lost friends” during that reading . . . I really can't understand all this bitterness and malice sweeping around lately. I myself, like Whalen, feel “indefinitely happy” (he says) . . . What am I doing today? typing up
Dharma Bums
, all day, every day, while people ball in bars (it's Saturday night) I toil and toil on my typewriter and get bored and so revert to letters like these . . . what a scribbler I am now. I have to complete a story about desolation peak for
Holiday
mag., etc., have to figure out a movie for Robert Frank, have to write big 5000 word letters to Hollywood producer giving ideas, etc., it's getting out of hand . . . have to complete typing of
Dharma Bums
and at same time they're starting to tear down house around me and I'm racing against time. Ah, how I'll relax and do nothin when I get to Paris (I hope sometime soon). You shouldn't have got that $25 room for nothing, supposing Bill arrives in March? That's what I meant by don't spend your money I sent you, foolishly . . . that wasn't practical . . . but if Bill does arrive soon then its okay. Holmes is in England, not yet in Paris, he wrote big article about the beat in
Esquire
, about me mostly, at behest of that fine young editor there who wants you too, Rust Hills Jr., nice kid . . . don't despair, everybody wants you. Don't start screaming at robot America with its secret hidden Lafcadios in the night etc. its millions of Lafcadios, all Americans with birth certificates, etc. America is not going to take a Fall . . . there's your France with its “ideal” setup and shit, France is dull. America's flaws go with her immense virtues, don't you see that . . . France has no flaws, really, and therefore no virtues. Glad you're reading
Caesar Birotteau
, great novel, you know the greatest of all Balzac's novels is
Cousin Bette
. All the Orlovskys sleep a lot, and so do I, so did Joe Louis world heavyweight champ . . . it's the custom of the champs . . . sleep a lot alla time . . . then you store up vibrations . . . turn them on in shining life. Of monster scenery in NY Lou said, anyway, said, “I admire you for putting up with it, K.” or something like that, meaning, my nightly appearances among sneers. But I had a big ball alla time reading and yakking with new friends, I don't understand what
Village Voice
is putting down, recent most terrible attack I haven't seen yet is said to gloat at our downfall (you and me) at last! this I gotta see, with
Subterraneans
coming out in two weeks, and movie of
On the Road
almost sure bet and with big company too (20th Century) and the completion of a new novel just as good (salable, readable) as
Road
, and a thousand other things, not to mention, via your side, your new poems. Yes, Spengler says Russia next, but he said it would be long time yet, America ain't reached its Faustian ripe moment yet and won't for long time, will blow, in fact may not fade at all actually since history being bypassed now by nature-laws (of science). I'd say, Africa will then absorb Russia that follows. But meanwhile Asia will have joined with West, so finally big worldwide daisychain . . . just as you wished . . . because everything, Allen, you ever ever wished for, will come true in TIME, don't you know what that means?