The Unknown Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac

  It wasnt until I got to New York I realized what was really going on with all this alien business of asking me questions about things I’d never thought about, as tho I should have presumed to understand America from just a few hitch hiking and railroad adventures in the night (or old college and high school and football adventures, or even early drunken seaman adventures). There was something going on in America I was about to learn. But meanwhile it seems to me today rather ironic that on the night of my departure to all this in New York I should have been studying Dante’s leopard of incontinence because with the publication of Road I became drunk for almost 3 months (and the papers mentioned it and omitted it not). And Dante’s lion of ambition because the money suddenly started to pour in and I answered the requests of everyone to write for money. And Dante’s wolf of avarice, goes with it. But let’s look at me now as I arrive in New York, still rolling my own cigarettes with Bull Durham paper to save money, scratching through a Sept. 4 New York trash can looking for a newspaper to see what kind of reviews Road got from the literary critics. Not a thing in sight. Old papers covered with spit. So I trudge to the publishers office.

  It was also something that was about to be understood by my poet friend Allen Ginsberg who received a Life reporter several years later in his apartment on the Lower East Side of New York (just a kitchen with a kitchen bathtub and two back rooms) and the reporter said “I’ve come here to write your story and the story of the Beats but I’m not going to be sympathetic.” “Then why have you come here?” asks Allen. “And in fact,” he adds, “you look evil to me. Why dont you just leave?”—But the writer stayed and smiled that “chatty” commuters’ chatty smile, I mean that smile you see among welldressed men in suits and neckties carrying hard leather briefcases but their eyes are slitted and they’re all pouring into Grand Central station from their jobs on Madison Avenue and Fifth and elsewhere, something in America that’s almost as archaic now as I think of it as the extended beak of the Cro Magnon horse on a cave—“I’ve come to write some nasty news about you whether you like it or not and I’m staying”—“But why dont you leave?” insisted Allen—

  APPENDIX

  I WISH I WERE YOU

  I Wish I Were You

  While living in New York in 1944, Kerouac was introduced to William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and David Kammerer by a Columbia University undergraduate, Lucien Carr. Carr was the impious sun around which the nascent Beat Movement had revolved. In August of 1944, however, Carr stabbed Kammerer to death in Riverside Park, claiming that he was acting in self-defense against the elder Kammerer’s decade-long sexual stalking. In the days following Kammerer’s death, both Kerouac and Burroughs were arrested as accessories after the fact, as neither had reported his knowledge of the killing to the police. Those charges were nullified when Carr was charged with manslaughter rather than murder.

  Kammerer’s death provided the material for And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a hardboiled novel collaboratively composed by Kerouac and Burroughs in 1945 (and published by Grove Press in 2008). Writing the book in alternating chapters—under the pseudonyms Mike Ryko and Will Dennison—Kerouac and Burroughs created the first major literary work of the New York Beat Movement. It records an impression of 1940s New York bohemia in blunt, streetwise American prose reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. In a March 1945 letter to his sister Caroline, Kerouac identified the work as “a portrait of the ‘lost’ segment of our generation, hardboiled, honest, and sensationally real.” Publishers, including Simon and Schuster, did not share this glowing assessment, and after a round of rejections Kerouac set about transforming Hippos into I Wish I Were You, on which he worked until August 1945.

  CHAPTER ONE

  August 25, 1945

  WE ARE ALL THE POSSESSORS of a certain courage, that’s it. Provide for the fact that we insist on using that flimsy word, and here’s a truth; not a truth to open eyes, certainly, but a dismal human fact for all it’s worth. Courage!—that’s the word as we use it. At that time, as now, we were all possessed of our certain eccentric little courage. Will Dennison knew when it was time to go to bed, and did. Ramsey Allen preferred death to life as long as life didn’t respond to a certain whim. Phillip Tourian . . . he had the maddest courage of them all: he searched the four corners of New York City in a quest which he called an “investigation of our culture,” and never slept! Michael Ryko liked to sleep and face his nightmares, with a kind of lazy curiosity: the rest of the time, he was either drunk or just dozing. (I think his courage was the least rigorous, though certainly not uninteresting, if one may put it that way.) Then there was Praline LaJeune: anyone could see that she was just ripe for a disease of some sort, any kind, providing it was horrible enough and bound to eat out her beautiful, ineffable, self-corroding flesh. Praline LaJeune and Phillip Tourian were in love. Their love took a form of insanity that was simultaneously charming and destructive. Then there was Feinstein, the intellectual: he had something more than courage, he had impertinence: but to do him justice one must add that he was sad, always sad. What a group! There were others too. Like Janie Thomson. Everybody in the group came from the four corners of America, drifted there to New York City, to form a little group, as dismal and futile a little group as all the other little groups in the place.

  That’s what Manhattan is, a place full of little groups. No more monstrous a city has ever been put together. You’d expect to draw a sense of warmth and comfort, as the saying goes, from all these buildings and streets and restaurants and bars. But no . . . Take everybody in Manhattan and have them pitch seven million or so tents in the plains, and very likely some semblance of humanity may emerge. Other than that, Manhattan will continue as it is, a place that kills everything that comes to it, one way or the other. Manhattan will do it more quickly than any other human encampment on this earth of life. Manhattan is a death trap, built right over hell: have you not seen smoke coming out of holes in its streets? What more proof does one need?

  All this has to be properly elaborated, like a theme. Don’t be fooled by the strains of some Mozart symphony stealing out of well-lit rooms, where the window is opened, it’s summertime, voices inside are full of loving perception: someone saying “See? See?”, triumphantly. Don’t be fooled by that. Around the corner of the window lurks that which kills; around the corner, barely visible, is the aura of death wearing a shadowy cape gliding back and forth or up and down, smelling of dead cats wrapped in packages. What a monster! . . . and how it thrives in this town!

  But after all, even death gets lonesome in the country.

  So we all came to New York because we were lonesome. All of us with our special little satchel of courage. We were all heroes. One has to be a hero to just live, that’s a fact. That’s what baptism must mean: baptism must be some sort of decoration for having come into life and death. No questions asked! The heroic infant is a strong and silent type.

  Our own particular little group had something happen to it, something that reached out and touched everybody in it. Therefore, unlike many other little groups, ours became an expression of something, and gained, it must be admitted, a certain amount of notoriety. Responsible for this elevation from the murk of nothing-happens, was Phillip Tourian. But then without Ramsay Allen, nothing would have happened anyway. Then there was Will Dennison, the fellow who had that strange courage of knowing when it was time to go to bed and doing so: perhaps he was a key, too. It’s hard to say.

  One thing certain, is that the events that led up to everything began on a Saturday night in August.

  A night when Will Dennison exhibited that special courage of his. He was standing on Sheridan Square, down in Greenwich Village, with a toothpick in his mouth. He had just eaten an early breakfast in Riker’s. It was some time after three o’clock in the morning. He just stood there, in a slouched, stooping attitude, perhaps wearily watching what was going on. Everybody knows what Sheridan Square is like on Saturday nights, after the bars have closed: th
e whole place is lit up like a carnival, there’s music coming from juke boxes in Mexican and Italian restaurants, traffic wheels about, people are all over the sidewalks. This is a time when you see drunken scenes that are unforgettable. Here, Will Dennison had once seen a big blonde flatten a sailor in a furious fist fight. That sort of thing attracted his attention: he would linger for that. But on this Saturday night, there was only the usual carnival scene; and the drunks were not original. They milled about, growling. Someone was having a bitter argument with himself: in a moment, now, he would start swinging, that was certain. Someone else yelled “I’ve got a cab!” and six others rushed across the street to spill into the cab, men, women. A jolly party. God only knew where they were going. Everybody was going somewhere. The streets led away from the Square in all directions, streets of light, some of them ending dimly way yonder at the waterfront, but most of them leading to more light.

  In this feverish cluster of lights, moth-like men lingered to see what was going on. They stood on corners, in doorways, watching. There was time enough to return to the gloom of their rooms; time enough before putting out the light to sleep. Manhattan is the greatest artificial enemy of darkness and death in the world. Manhattan and death have signed a sardonic contract. Yet, you see, one can hardly suspect that: look at all the light! That’s what these men on corners and doorways were thinking. But Will Dennison, he knew that on top of every streetlamp, in the murk just above the shade, sat the shadow . . . waiting and watching and scratching itself. Smelling of cats wrapped in packages, dead ones; smelling of closets where such packages are kept over the years. All you need do is open the closet door, and a hurricane of stench will rush out to you. But no one knew where that particular door was, until they blundered into it; meanwhile, they stood around or wandered about looking for other doors. Yet, ironically enough, there was only one door to open.

  So Dennison put his courage to use. While everybody else was waiting around in feverish and eternal anticipation, he yawned and went home, with the News and Mirror under his arm, and the toothpick dangling from his mouth.

  He went home along a narrow street that spoked out from Sheridan Square, leaving all that light behind him, advancing into the shadows, himself a tall shadow stooping slightly.

  Dennison was an expert in little things. He went through all the little motions wearily. He took out his key ring, unlocked the street door, closed the door, went up the steps, unlocked the door of his apartment, went in, closed the door, and turned on the light. He dropped the News and Mirror on the couch, peeled off his seersucker coat and dropped it on top of them.

  He went into the bathroom, turned on the light in there, and sneered at the mirror. This reminded him of his teeth. He picked up toothbrush and toothpaste, and washed his teeth.

  That’s all you could hear in his apartment, some swooshing in the bathroom sink, water running, the little sounds of daily toiletry. Outside of that, no other sound. The curtains moved slightly in the open window, as though the night were only occasionally sighing. Loud voices in the street below. No matter! . . . some drunks who do not know when it’s time to go to bed, so carry on like madmen throughout the night.

  Dennison went into his bedroom and sat on the bed. He was staring into space, automatically undoing his tie, the way men sometimes do before pensively going off to sleep . . . when the buzzer rang. This then would put a crimp in his musings, in his plans, in his yawning abstractions.

  He jumped up and went over to push the button that released the street door. Then he picked up his coat off the couch and hung it over a chair, so no one would sit on it . . . this is what he was thinking. He put the papers in a drawer. He wanted them to be there when morning came. What else? He was going through all the little motions of self preservation. There were steps in the hall outside, so he went to the door, stooping slightly, wearily, to handle the door knob. He opened the door with a flourish. He had timed it just right so that they didn’t get a chance to knock. He didn’t know who they were, but he strongly suspected it was a contingent of our little group. Other contingents were scrabbling around somewhere else. This contingent was dropping in on Dennison at four o’clock in the morning.

  Dennison showed his teeth before he even saw who it was. That was a trick of his: he had learned to smile pleasantly everywhere except at his mouth. It was a private joke of his that we all immensely enjoyed . . .

  Seemingly out of nowhere, with startling abruptness, Phillip Tourian was in and through the door, clicking his heels noisily, head erect, cigarette smoke trailing after him, eyebrows arched. He was sitting in the most comfortable chair in the room with a leg over the arm before the others were all in. This was certainly Phillip, to be sure. He had thrown himself in the chair with a slam. He was grinning at Dennison . . . with amusement.

  “We have come, Uncle Edouard.”

  “So I see.”

  The others were Ramsay Allen, Mike Ryko, and Agnes O’Rourke. Agnes was the most important person at the moment. She had a bottle of Canadian Club in her hands, holding it up for Dennison to see. “Look what I’ve got!”

  “Canadian Club! Come in, come right in and sit down.” By now they were all sitting down anyway, except Agnes, who stood holding up the bottle in an effort to prolong the surprise. Dennison stood there shaking his head.

  “Well, well.” And then, “Do sit down, Agnes.”

  She sat down, Dennison closed the door; then he went to the cupboard, reaching in two long white hands. He had some cocktail glasses. That’s the way we were, very hospitable . . .

  Ramsay Allen was an impressive looking big man with prematurely gray hair, around his late thirties. He was looking at Dennison, with his head cocked to one side: “Well, Will, I hope you don’t mind our dropping in at this late hour?” All by way of a parody on people who say such things at such times. Dennison was alert to everything. He cocked his head to one side also, and said, “Why no, not at all. Make yourselves to home.” He rubbed his hands zestfully, like a host.

  “Guess how and where I got it?” Agnes wanted to be asked. Dennison picked up the bottle and started to pour around. Yes, he wanted to know. Agnes waved the story over to Ramsay Allen, who was sitting on the floor at Phillip’s feet. “Tell him, Al.”

  “We were in the Pied Piper, just before closing time, standing at the end of the bar drinking beer . . .” Allen’s voice trailed away; vaguely. He then wound up another turn of effort. “Suddenly Agnes says to me, pick up your change and follow me. I’ve got a bottle of Canadian Club under my coat. We walked out. I was more scared than she was. I hadn’t even seen her take it . . .” Allen turned his face up to Phillip to grin. “That was just before we bumped into you at George’s . . .”

  “I must say,” Dennison commented, “that shows commendable enterprise.”