Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (70 page)

Goombye.

Don't steal that hat. I want it. Grook. Yak. Kitchen yakkings. Not important. Come on. Besides soon we'll part, later grow old, die, you won't even be at my funeral . . . we'll remember with tears. I'm sorry I hurt you. Our lives are no longer ours. So we'll go home. Far away. Goldclime. Don't waste your energy on the frenzies of mediocrities. Genius is Calm. Whalen is a Genius. Caterpillar genius. Peter is a Saint. So sleep. Write hymn for me.

Jack

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

June 18 1959

 

Hello Mike!

 

Dear Allen:

Received all your poems and everybody's poems, Whalen's etc. (including your recent batch with Burroughs letter enclosed) so all is set except the kind of mad man who is the editor at Avon who keeps taking me out on binges that always end the same way with him flipping beating his girl who cries on my shoulder etc. I keep getting the feeling the anthology will never out, he'll kill himself or something (insane Tom Payne) . . . I told him and told him to rush on this job because I'm leaving but he does nothing, so it looks like I'll have to write my running commentary on the (now) two anthologies (have that much material!) in Florida or even Mexico since I'm leaving Northport here within a month . . . actually might get it all done at last minute. Will leave present pile at Sterling's. If this guy flips (and W. R. Hearst just bought Avon Books!) and everything falls thru I will be accused by all the poets of stealing their manuscripts! But I'll have to mail them all back at my own expense. The trouble with these (like you sad) (said) guys in “business” (Payne is the guy who wrote that letter about the disastrousness of publishing
Sax
at this time) is that they don't have the quiet serene sense of work-accomplished that we “beatnik” poets have, they flip and let everything go to pot!! I could have all this anthology, both of em, ready in two days if he'd simply send me his batch, which I would collate with my new batches, tack on commentaries, and send to printer!—Anyway, we'll see.

Allen, Hanover records who made my Steve Allen record now want to advance you $500 to make an album with them, in NY here, also they want Gregory. So there's your money you need! THAT could be your last reading.

Sterling is going to be your agent in this deal anyway so write to Sterling and get all the details. He SHOULD be your agent or you'll get screwed on subsidiary rights later on, so stick to him, he's been fair and honest with me, and he is willing to arrange for Gregory too. The guy looking for you is Bob Thiele.

Everything is too much, I'm trying to run away back to my quiet soul now but so many things hanging, so I turned down another album offer (was to cut it tomorrow) and turned down even articles with
Playboy
etc., I am mentally exhausted and spiritually discouraged by this shit of being of having to do what everybody wants me to do instead of just my old private life of poesies and novelies as of yore.

I met Eugene your brother on the train and said I would like him to be my attorney in the closing sale of house but when I got back to N'Port it turned out the broker had arranged for local lawyer and I want to tell Eugene but lost his card and don't have his address or anything, so tell him? He did send me a penny postcard with a completely illeligible illegible return address.

Even Lucien came to get me last night for wild weekend in woods, can't do it, have to concentrate on packing and escaping all this. Lucien said I had become strangely philosophical. I saw a snapshot of myself taken recently in which I could see with my own eyes what all this lionized manure has done to me: it's killing me rapidly. I have to escape or die, don't you see? I can't get all hungup at this time on anything ANYTHING. So what I can do, as last thing, is ask Laughlin to write to Neal and offer him a job, okay. I haven't even got the spiritual energy to write a preface to
Visions of Cody
like Laughlin wants.

As for Jacques Stern, if he can write prose like
Subterraneans
and has imagination to conceive a
Dr. Sax
and the energy to write an
On the Road
and the spiritual fervor to write a
Visions of Gerard
, I'll believe what Bill says about him. Sounds like he's hypnotized Bill, to me, what with all the drugs too. There will be a great writer who will rise above us but I'm sure he will be a young American kid in about ten or twenty years, like after Melville and Whitman there came Twain. Don't be discouraged by talk like that from Bill, he sounds jealous now. I'm so sick of being insulted by every critic and everybody and now even by Bill whom I lauded so much and put over so well at Wesleyan! Fuck him. Besides no Stern Jackes can write a “Bomb” like Gregory, I can promise you that. Have you seen Dr. W.C. Williams' weird statement about Peter Orlov?—that we have a lot to learn from Petey?—in that new magazine put out by Willard Maas' son? Somebody stole my copy of it. Wagner College magazine.

Meanwhile, I hope I see you, when you get back just come with Peter to visit his mother and drop over, my mother won't mind and we'll say goodbye here. If you're too late, I'll see you in India or in Heaven . . .

Hasn't it been awful? We were so swingy? And now young poets are sneering at us? And saying that we're merely mellow classics now? without even reading
Sax
and
Kaddish
? in fact they're all screaming at the same time, how can they read?—Ho Ho!—I know what part of the blue sky. I go to . . . Ho Ho I'm happy. I'm happy to be free again . . . Ho Ho.

Cruseke. fool him all

Jean XXX

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to
Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York]

July 1, 1959 c/o City Lights

 

Dear Jack:

Living in dank hotel on North Beach last few days preparing to leave. Still working on Neal—endless complications, newspapermen with wisecracks and political connections, lawyers, etc. once I set whatever impulse I can going in the machinery, I'll leave—just a few days. Laughlin wrote a beautiful letter, rapidly.

Sorry I will miss you before July 4—the Fantasy record was slow making and then this Cassady dilemma. Maybe see you in Florida with Burroughs. Thanks for arranging deal with Hanover, but I'd already signed good contract with Fantasy and was working on the tape. They also sent Gregory $150 to Venice, he wrote he was in jail. You're right to disappear to Florida and take it easy. All the poets here Duncan (who is a good poet) and the lousy ones are tearing me apart psychically with their joyless ambitions. John Wieners by the way—I heard him read his
Hotel Wentley
poems—it made me cry, they are classic like Hart Crane's “Behind my fathers cannery works”—You have that book? He is a real poet, sad and damned and tender. I mean better than anything else here except Chances.

Oh Bill must be a little nuts with dope now, that's all, and Stern has him hypnotized by flattery and junk and yachts. Also Stern's intelligent—they must be on some strange kick. Bill probably write disillusioned Mediterranean letters soon. Yes he forgets the art-devotion pact, and mellowness under ten year bridges. But he never dug that as much as mysterious sorceries with chemicals and psychic strange victories. So he's doing fine up his alley. I saw the Wagner magazine, it was funny and full of attention, but it depressed me, nobody gets the joke. Williams on Peter is golden hearted though. I dunno why old English Anarchist [Sir Herbert] Read thinks we're Nihilists, but he's more sympathetic than most big shots.

After a year's stupidity I finally got the point—Peter's typing his poem up
with
spelling mistakes. They're part of the beauty of his soul I see. I was always trying to clean them up to be neat. So far, find what we got enclosed. There are some more but he types so slow and I only goof when I do them for him, tho I did type some.

Anyway, we'll leave here very soon, and in a car, with a few hundred $ from Fantasy, and swing into the West and wander hand in hand in small towns by deserts and forget the world awhile anyway, I want to see Grand Canyon still. We'll drive over Yosemite Sierras and down the east side of the mountains and maybe thru Death Valley.

From my LSD poem—take
out
that little section of lines “Gods dance on their own bodies . . . This is the end of man”—and put it separate as a little poem. It doesn't belong
in
the LSD notes, I added it later.

Keep Peter's spelling the way it is, if it looks alright to you—change what you think necessary if any.

I'm dragged and depressed by literary politics—my own fault for even getting involved at all—OK be free under blue sky soon. Flowers,

Allen

 

 

Jack Kerouac [Northport, New York] to
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York]

October 6, 1959

 

Allen:

Truman Capote notwithstanding,
¹⁴⁷
I'm still catching up with the stuff I wrote by hand, am only now (like you) typing up
Orlando Blues
written in 1957, also busy. Running the anthology isn't as hard as you think, I can answer [Marc] Schleifer
¹⁴⁸
myself, in fact am doing so this minute, okay I can do whole thing by myself if you want. I thought you might need the money and ALSO have a better knack than me for picking up true gems and historical diamonds . . . more opportunity, that is, hanging around Village etc. Let me know what you secretly really feel you want to do about working with me or not on Avon anthology. The second number is already well set with Ed Dorn's great new poems, his “Buck” story, with [Bob] Donlin's great story, with [Herbert] Huncke's new gems you mentioned (Huncke, all he has to do is keep writing those gempy vignettes and then we'll have a whole BOOK and take it to Sterling)—(Peter too)—(you too). Tell your story, you lazy bastards, people pay money for stories not just easy pomes rattled off couches. Yes we can have Avon send back what we don't want with big diplomatic notes by Preston or Payne, easy enuf. In fact Schleifer already recovered his manuscript and wants to bring it back again! You don't have to visit Payne and bother him, do all by mail. As I say, I can do it alone—I am going to start writing longer smarter running commentaries for this material too—first time is short drunk notes—Time to get Tough, like
Time
magazine—SO MAKE UP YOUR MIND ABOUT CO-EDITORSHIP.

What radio station will you be on with
Mexcity Blues
, when, date? I am going to H'wood Nov. 12th in train for 2 G shot with Steve Allen, want to read railroad prose or something—or from
Visions of Neal
about west—golden west—so won't leave NY till then, go to Mexico after. Got a note and a poem from Creeley, will ask him for stuff for second anthology.

The only way to detach yourself from all this frantic non-literary activity is go away, to Greece join Gregory write golden poems under fig trees of Crete. If you work like your father keeps yapping in Paterson you could fritter away in office desk—travel! That $100 you spent last week was half fare to Greece. When my
On the Road
deal is set, if ever, I'll give or lend you the money for any trip you want. We'll try to make a trip with Lucien to mountains this October, okay?

Big Table
sold 7000 copies of that mag., made enough money to pay me my measly $50 for “Old Angel”, haven't done it, in fact have the nerve to write nasty notes to Sterling who's only doing his job, and then on top of all that hold back my Ferlinghetti deal, just a bunch of greedy sneaky shits and you can shove them up your ass, and on top of that they use MY title. Start a magazine of your own—why fiddle around with Paul Carroll
¹⁴⁹
—who is dying to put not only me down, but poor McClure and Whalen and Lamantia, like a virago—who cares about him anyway? What has he done to command your attention?—and what's so great about the magazine? LeRoi [Jones] is starting
Kulchur
and you have
Yugen
and
Beatitude
, all those lil things will grow into big
Dials
in time.

Okay for mescal, be in soon, but waiting for you and Pete come out here like you said to pick up clothes and dig basement . . . altho, wait, then, I'll come out myself soon and bring the clothes a neat package. Everything mixed up, in fact—movie men coming this afternoon, silly telegram just came, I can't even write letters, bulletins everywhere.

[ . . . ] Virus gone now, except big cough like I had remember in January 1957 at the Helens' when we all had coughs from Mexico trip in car. Yes I remember Spencer . . . I don't have the Dutchman's address—why don't I do that in your kitchen, on white sheet. That's nice the nice things you write about me. In next anthology I will try to match that.

Just wrote the finger sutra, in my yard, t'other night, pod. silly, I guess. am kinda bored. Enclosed is a seminar where they lump beatniks with delinquents and drag what's left of the segment of America that's artistic into the criminal muck. Thought you might want to throw a bomb at them. This is the good work of Alfred Zugsmith emerging, like last night a parody on me on TV “Jack Crackerjack” I leap up (hair pasted on brow) and start screaming “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by naked hysteria . . . Kill for the sake of killing!” (Louis Nye the actor) ugh.

Jack

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., Northport, New York?]

October 16, 1959

Oct. 1959

 

Dear Jack:

Got your letter, and had sent one yesterday answering some questions, yes, I'm working, and been to see the material at Avon as said and did not bother Payne—in any case he'd asked me to come up independent of that material and suggest some other books to him (collected Melville poems, Dickinson, Lindsay, etc.).