Best Minds of My Generation

by Allen Ginsberg

  That’s Burroughs making fun of himself, because he went to medical school in Vienna.

  The floor tilted from the force of the explosion. The doctor reeled back and hit the wall.

  “Sew her up!” he said, peeling off his gloves. “I can’t be expected to work under such conditions!”

  At a table in the bar sat Christopher Hitch, a rich liberal; Colonel Merrick, retired; Billy Hines of Newport; and Joe Bane, writer.

  “In all my experience as a traveler,” the Colonel was saying, “I have never encountered such service.”

  Billy Hines twisted his glass, watching the ice cubes. “Frightful service,” he said, his face contorted by a suppressed yawn.

  “Do you think the Captain controls this ship?” said the Colonel, fixing Christopher Hitch with a bloodshot blue eye.

  “Unions!” shouted the Colonel. “Unions control this ship!”

  Hitch gave out with a laugh that was supposed to be placating but ended up oily.

  “Things aren’t so bad, really,” he said, patting at the Colonel’s arm. He didn’t land the pat because the Colonel drew his arm out of reach. “Things will adjust themselves.”

  Joe Bane looked up from his drink of straight rye.

  “It’s like I say, Colonel,” he said. “A man—”

  The table left the floor and the glasses crashed. Billy Hines remained seated, looking blankly at the spot where his glass had been. Christopher Hitch rose uncertainly. Joe Bane jumped up and ran away.

  “By God!” said the Colonel. “I’m not surprised!”

  Also at a table in the bar sat Philip Bradshinkel, investment banker, his wife Joan Bradshinkel, Branch Morton, a St. Louis politician, and Morton’s wife, Mary Morton.

  The explosion knocked their table over.

  Joan raised her eyebrows in an expression of sour annoyance. She looked at her husband and sighed.

  “I’m sorry this happened, dear,” said her husband. “Whatever it is, I mean.”

  Mary Morton said, “Well I declare!”

  Branch Morton stood up, pushing back his chair with a large red hand.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll find out.”

  Mrs. Norton pushed through a crowd on C Deck. She rang the elevator bell and waited. She rang again and waited. After five minutes she walked up to A Deck.

  The Negro orchestra, high on marijuana, remained seated after the explosion.

  Branch Morton walked over to the orchestra leader.

  “Play the Star Spangled Banner,” he ordered.

  The orchestra leader looked at him.

  “What you say?” he asked.

  “You black baboon, play the Star Spangled Banner on your horn!”

  “Contract don’t say nothing ’bout no Star Spangled Banner,” said a thin Negro in spectacles.

  “This old boat am swinging on down!” someone in the orchestra yelled, and the orchestra jumped down off the platform, and scattered among the passengers.

  Branch Morton walked over to a juke box in a corner of the saloon. He saw the Star Spangled Banner by Fats Waller. He put in a handful of quarters. The machine clicked and buzzed and began to play.

  “OH SAY CAN YOU? YES YES”

  Joe Bane fell against the door of his stateroom and plunged in. He threw himself on the bed and drew his knees up to his chin. He began to sob.

  His wife sat on the bed and talked to him in a gentle hypnotic voice.

  “You can’t stay here, Joey. This bed is going underwater. You can’t stay here.”

  Gradually the sobbing stopped and Bane sat up. She helped him put on a life belt.

  “Come along,” she said.

  “Yes, Honey Face,” he said, and followed her out the door.

  “AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE”

  Mrs. Norton found the door to the Captain’s cabin ajar. She pushed it open and stepped in, knocking on the open door. A tall, thin, red-haired man with horn-rim glasses was sitting at a desk littered with maps. He glanced up without speaking.

  “Oh Captain, is the ship sinking? Someone set off a bomb they said. I’m Mrs. Norton, you know. Mr. Norton, ship business. Oh the ship is sinking! I know, or you’d say something. Captain, you will take care of us? My maid and me?” She put out a hand to touch the Captain’s arm. The ship listed suddenly, throwing her heavily against the desk. Her wig slipped.

  The Captain stood up. He snatched the wig off her head and put it on.

  “Give me that kimono!” he ordered.

  Mrs. Norton screamed. She started for the door. The Captain took three long springy strides and blocked her way. Mrs. Norton rushed for a window screaming. The Captain took a revolver from his side pocket. He aimed at her bald pate outlined in the window and fired.

  “You God-damned old fool,” he said. “Give me that kimono!”

  Philip Bradshinkel walked up to a sailor with his affable smile.

  “Room for the ladies on this one?” he asked, indicating a lifeboat.

  The sailor looked at him sourly.

  “No!” said the sailor. He turned away and went on working on the launching davit.

  “Now wait a minute,” said Bradshinkel. “You can’t mean that. Women and children first, you know.”

  “Nobody goes on this lifeboat but the crew,” said the sailor.

  “Oh, I understand,” said Bradshinkel, pulling out a wad of bills.

  The sailor snatched the money.

  “I thought so,” said Bradshinkel. He took his wife by the arm and started to help her into the lifeboat.

  “Get that old meat outa here!” screamed the sailor.

  “But you made a bargain! You took my money!”

  “Oh for Chrissakes,” said the sailor. “I just took your dough so it wouldn’t get wet!”

  “But my wife is a woman!”

  Suddenly the sailor became very gentle.

  “All my life,” he said, “all my life I been a sucker for a classy dame. I seen ’em in the Sunday papers lying on the beach. Soft messy tits. They just lie there and smile dirty. Jesus they heat my pants!”

  Bradshinkel nudged his wife. “Smile at him.” He winked at the sailor. “What do you say?”

  “Naw,” said the sailor, “I ain’t got time to lay her now.”

  “Later,” said Bradshinkel.

  “Later’s no good. Besides she’s special built for you. She can’t give me no kids and she drinks alla time. Like I say, I just seen her in the Sunday papers and wanted her like a dog wants rotten meat.”

  “Let me talk to this man,” said Branch Morton. He worked his fingers over the fleshy shoulder of his wife and pulled her under his armpit.

  “This little woman is a mother,” he said. The sailor blew his nose on the deck. Morton grabbed the sailor by the bicep.

  “In Clayton, Missouri, seven kids whisper her name through their thumbs before they go to sleep.”

  The sailor pulled his arm free. Morton dropped both hands to his side, palms facing forward.

  “As man to man,” he was pleading. “As man to man.”

  Two Negro musicians, their eyes gleaming, came up behind the two wives. One took Mrs. Morton by the arm, the other took Mrs. Bradshinkel.

  “Can us have dis dance witchu?”

  “THAT OUR FLAG WAS STILL THERE”

  Captain Kramer, wearing Mrs. Norton’s kimono and wig, his face heavily smeared with cold cream, and carrying a small suitcase, walked down to C Deck, the kimono billowing out behind him. He opened the side door to the Purser’s office with a pass key. A thin-shouldered man in a Purser’s uniform was stuffing currency and jewels into a suitcase in front of an open safe.

  The Captain’s revolver swung free of his brassiere and he fired twice.

  “SO GALLANTLY STREAMING”

  Finch, the radio oper
ator, washed down bicarbonate of soda and belched into his hand. He put the glass down and went on tapping out S.O.S.

  “S.O.S. . . . S.S. America . . . S.O.S. . . . off Jersey coast . . . S.O.S. son of a bitching set . . . S.O.S. . . . might smell us . . . S.O.S. . . . son of a bitching crew . . . S.O.S. . . . Comrade Finch . . . comrade in a pig’s ass . . . S.O.S. . . . God-damned Captain’s a brown artist . . . S.O.S. . . . S.S. America . . . S.O.S. . . . S.S. Crapbox . . .”

  Lifting his kimono with his left hand, the Captain stepped in behind the radio operator. He fired one shot into the back of Finch’s head. He shoved the small body aside and smashed the radio with a chair.

  “O’ER THE RAMPARTS WE WATCH”

  Dr. Benway, carrying his satchel, pushed through the passengers crowded around Lifeboat No. 1.

  “Are you all alright?” he shouted, seating himself among the women. “I’m the Doctor.”

  “BY THE ROCKET’S RED GLARE”

  When the Captain reached Lifeboat No. 1 there were two seats left. Some of the passengers were blocking each other as they tried to force their way in, others were pushing forward a wife, a mother, or a child. The Captain shoved them all out of his way, leapt into the boat and sat down. A boy pushed through the crowd in the Captain’s wake.

  “Please,” he said. “I’m only thirteen.”

  “Yes yes,” said the Captain, “you can sit by me.”

  The boat started jerkily toward the water, lowered by four male passengers. A woman handed her baby to the Captain.

  “Take care of my baby, for God’s sake!”

  Joe Bane landed in the boat and slithered noisily under a thwart. Dr. Benway cast off the ropes. The doctor and the boy started to row. The Captain looked back at the ship.

  “OH SAY CAN YOU SEE”

  A third-year divinity student named Titman heard Perkins in his stateroom yelling for his attendant. He opened the door and looked in.

  “What do you want, thicken thit?” said Perkins.

  “I want to help you,” said Titman.

  “Thtick it up with thwitht it!” said Perkins.

  “Easy does it,” said Titman, walking over towards the broken wheelchair. “Everything is going to be Okey-dokey.”

  “Thneaked off!” Perkins put a hand on one hip and jerked the elbow forward in a grotesque indication of dancing.

  “Danthing with floothies!”

  “We’ll find him,” said Titman, lifting Perkins out of the wheelchair. He carried the withered body in his arms like a child.

  As Titman walked out of the stateroom, Perkins snatched up a butcher knife used by his attendant to make sandwiches.

  “Danthing with floothies!”

  “BY THE DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT”

  A crowd of passengers was fighting around Lifeboat No. 7. It was the last boat that could be launched. They were using bottles, broken deck chairs, and fire axes. Titman, carrying Perkins in his arms, made his way through the fighting unnoticed. He placed Perkins in a seat at the stern.

  “There you are,” said Titman. “All set.”

  Perkins said nothing. He sat there, chin drawn back, eyes shining, the butcher knife clutched rigidly in one hand.

  A hysterical crowd from second class began pushing from behind. A big-faced shoe clerk with long yellow teeth grabbed Mrs. Bane and shoved her forward.

  “Ladies first!” he yelled. A wedge of men formed behind him and pushed. A shot sounded and Mrs. Bane fell forward, hitting the lifeboat. The wedge broke, rolling and scrambling.

  A man in ROTC uniform with a 45 automatic in his hand stood by the lifeboat. He covered the sailor at the launching davit.

  “Let this thing down!” he ordered.

  As the lifeboat slid down towards the water, a cry went up from the passengers on deck. Some of them jumped into the water, others were pushed by the people behind.

  “Let ’er go, God-damn it, let ’er go!” yelled Perkins.

  “Throw him out!”

  A hand rose out of the water and closed on the side of the boat. Springlike, Perkins brought the knife down. The fingers fell into the boat and the bloody stump of hand slipped back into the water.

  The man with the gun was standing in the stern.

  “Get going!” he ordered. The sailors pulled hard on the oars.

  Perkins worked feverishly, chopping on all sides. “Bathtardth, thonthabitheth!” The swimmers screamed and fell away from the boat.

  “That a boy.”

  “Don’t let ’em swamp us.”

  “Atta boy, Comrade.”

  “Bathtardth, thonthabitheth! Bathtardth, thonthabitheth!”

  “OH SAY DO DAT STAR SPANGLED BANNER YET WAVE”

  The Evening News

  Miss Canon showed your reporter her souvenirs of the disaster: a life belt autographed by the crew, and a severed human finger.

  “I don’t know,” said Miss Canon. “I feel sorta bad about this old finger.”

  “O’ER THE LAND OF THE FREE”87

  That was actually Burroughs’s first literary production. Kerouac was always a bit abashed, as I was, by Burroughs, but we all recognized his intelligence. Jack said, “He’s the most intelligent man in America,” because nobody else was cutting through the bullshit the way Burroughs was at that time. I was going to Columbia, nobody talked like that, nobody was so direct and intelligent and cynical, and at the same time funny, well informed, and precise in the description of manners. The nearest thing I know in literature was Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night.

  It was Kerouac’s beatific lyricism that turned Burroughs on to writing, because Burroughs couldn’t resist Kerouac’s enthusiasm finally. Kerouac was all enthusiasm, lyricism, innocence, fantastic ear, and great heart. And in spite of all his cynicism Burroughs was much affected by that, even though he occasionally thought that Kerouac was naive. Nonetheless, it turned him on to writing as a sacred vocation.

  I think Burroughs hates women, or at least did at the time. You can tell that he’s making fun of the American male [who is] dominated by the woman, which is pretty much upper-middle-class St. Louis aristocracy. The only people he gives credence to as having some sense are the blacks in the orchestra. They know where they are. I think he also likes the captain and Dr. Benway. He likes Dr. Benway because Benway is so outrageous, he represents that psychopathic element in Burroughs that won’t stop at anything. And [he likes] the captain who knows exactly what he’s doing. He puts on a woman’s kimono and shoots the purser and takes all the jewels and money and knocks out the radio operator so nobody will report it. It sounded like Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.

  CHAPTER 18

  Burroughs, Kerouac, and And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

  In 1946 Burroughs had a room above Riordan’s Bar near Columbus Circle. He moved [there] in order to explore all the bars up and down Eighth Avenue and Kerouac and I used to visit him and just sit around and talk. Burroughs was checking out all the different bars looking for characters. At the time he was reading John O’Hara, the hard-boiled detective short story writer. O’Hara was put down by the elegant writers of his day as being too commercial, because his first books were great successes, but he was quite interesting. So he, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and others wrote what was called hard-boiled fiction, mostly detective and stylistically quite interesting. They were post-Hemingway in that they didn’t go off into a lot of vaporous, gassy, flowery yak, but stuck to “no ideas but in things” as a basic slogan or method. High-precision detail with very good descriptions of people.

  Burroughs and Kerouac were reading Chandler and O’Hara for style and they decided to write a collaborative novel, which they called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. The title came from a news broadcast that Burroughs remembered. It was a description of a fire in the St. Louis Zoo, saying that t
he fire broke out and the caretakers got the snakes out of the snake house and rescued the lions, but there was a disaster among the emus and the cat houses and there was a great deal of trouble with the anteater, “and the hippos were boiled in their tanks!” So they used that as a title for the novel and each of them wrote a chapter. It was straightforward and it preceded Burroughs’s Junkie and Kerouac’s On the Road.

  Around that time Burroughs ran into Huncke in a bar [on Eighth Avenue] at 43rd Street called the Angle. Burroughs gives an account in Junkie of the transaction where he tried to sell Huncke some morphine syrettes. That was the beginning of Burroughs’s junk habit. I was hanging around and tried out some of those syrettes at the same time. I might have turned out to be a junkie except that I observed Burroughs. I took a lot of junk over the years thereafter, but always irregularly and made sure I simply didn’t take it twice in the same week, always irregularly, like ten days in between. I’m not a habit type anyway, I’m a workaholic.

  Burroughs didn’t see himself as a writer then. “Twilight’s Last Gleamings” was the only thing he ever wrote until he met Kerouac. Then the two of them wrote And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. It was based on Lucien Carr’s murder of David Kammerer.88 Burroughs became interested in Kerouac because he thought Kerouac was a real writer, somebody who actually went home and wrote. Jack didn’t just talk about it, he spent hours every day writing and lived only in terms of writing. He saw everything as a writer.

  Burroughs saw himself more as an investigator of souls and cities, a person of curiosity, or a picaresque adventurer. He was interested in information and facts, not so much interested in literature. The crucial time came when he killed his wife and was plunged into such despair that writing itself seemed to be the only activity, the only path open for him.89 It was not so much as redemption, but as a communicative activity which linked him with me and other people, with the rest of humanity, with friends. Burroughs was always cynical about writing in the sense that he always thought it was a romantic thing to do, until he found a function for it that was practical. Either as a conduit, like letters, epistolary writing, communication, or as an investigation of fact after the [discovery of] cut-up, as an investigation of the nature of consciousness, or an investigation into the nature of “the Word” itself, or even consciousness itself, which had become dominated by word and image. The writing and cut-up writing later was a cutting up of consciousness, a way of investigating consciousness, rubbing out the word.