by Jack Kerouac
“Look at the muchachas make the center of the world”—three little Biblical gals in robes and (I don’t know why I’m writing this I’ve got to do my typing) Let me finish, instead of staying the night with the gal I insisted we move on to Guadalajara, anxious now, as I got close, to see Bill the Champ. So he kissed her bobye and she got mad and yelled at me but we cut, and in the morning Guadalajara, where we wandered in the great market eating fruit. The beach at Mazatlan when we look’d at the girls five miles away and the red, brown, and black horses in the distance, and the bulls and cows, the enormous verdures, flat, the great sun setting in the Pacific over the Three Islands, was one of the great mystic rippling moments of my life—I saw right then that Enrique was great and that the Indian, the Mexican is great, straight, simple and perfect. Towards late afternoon, bussing now from Guadalajara (incidentally went through Ajijic little stone village of Helen but rolling) I slept; there is no more beautiful a land and state than that of Jalisco, Sinaloa is also lovely. We arrived in Mexico City near dawn. Not wake up Bill we instead walked in slums and slept in a criminal’s hovel for five pesos, all made of stone and piss, and blasted, and slept on miserable pad . . . he said to look out for the gunman. I avoided his learning Bill’s address, for obvious reasons, told him I’d meet him that night in front of post office, went to Bill’s, with seabag, the dust of great Mexico on my shoes. It was Saturday in Mexico City, the women were making tortillas, the radio was playing Perez Prado, I ate a five centavo powder candy that I first dug two years ago with Bill’s little Willy; odors of hot tortilla, the voices of the children, the Indian youths watching, the well dressed city children of Spanish schools, great clouds of the plateau over piney thin trees of morning and f uture.
Bill was like a mad genius in littered rooms when I walked in. He was writing. He looked wild, but his eyes innocent and blue and beautiful. We are the greatest of friends at last. At first I felt like a beat fool brought to a far flop in a land of centipedes, worms and rats, mad with Burroughs in a pad, but not so. And he persuaded me to stick to him instead of Enrique, somehow got me not to meet the kid that night, and I ain’t seen my saint Enrique since. That is, a guy who could teach me where, what to buy, where to live, on nothing-a-month; but instead I turned my mind again to the great St. Louis of American Aristocracy and has been so ever since. Wasn’t that right decision? The kid, I mean, I feel sorry for standing him up—but Bill can’t afford any contacts save Dave83 you know, his position is delicate. His Queer is greater than Junk—I think now it was a good idea to put them together, with Queer we can expect big Wescotts, Girouxs and Vidals to read it avidly, not only Junkie-interested types, see. Title? “Junk or Queer” or something . . . hey? JUNK OR QUEER OR JUNK, OR QUEER JUNK AND QUEER But title must have indications of both. Bill is great. Greater than he ever was. Misses Joan terribly. Joan made him great, lives on in him like mad, vibrating. We went to the Ballet Mexicano together, Bill danced out to catch bus we went on a weekend to Tenecingo in the mountains, did some shooting (it was an accident, you know, no doubt about it anywheres) . . . In the mountain canyon there was depth. Bill was up on the hill striding along tragically; we had separated at the river in order to go separate ways—always take the right road Bill had said night before about cobble-stone road and asphalt regular road to Tenencingo—so but now, he was taking left road, climb along ridge to mouth of cut, and back along, to road, avoiding river—I wanted to in the inexpressible softness of Biblical Day and Fellaheen Afternoon wash my feet at the place where the maidens left their cloth parts, and sat on a rock (shook spiders from it first but they were only the little spiders that watch the river of honies, creek of God, God and honey, in the flow of the gold, the rocks are soft, the grass just reaches to the lip, I washed and laved my poor feet, waded across my Genesee, and headed for the road (holes in my shoes now, I’m at my last ten bucks in this foreign land) interrupted just once by canyon where depth and tragedy made me circle further, met Bill in a Tenencingo soda fountain waiting. We came back that night, after Turkish baths, etc. Bill’s Marker [Lewis Marker] has left him; I have had two women so far, one American with huge tits, and a splendid mex whore in house. Met several great Americans . . . but they all got arrested yesterday for weed, tell you their names later (Kells [Elvins] among them, as if Kells was a teahead) (or pusher) Bill and I clean, cool; we have Dave [Tercerero]. Bill and I want huge letter from you about Wyn situation, for both of us (my manuscript coming soon, 550 pages); more news about [Jean] Genet, first-degree murder? news about everything, and again I want to know where are the first 23 pages of On the Road goddamit! (Will insert into manuscript for me?)
Write
J.
Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, New Jersey] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., Mexico City, Mexico?]
416 East 34 Street
May 15, 1952
12:00 Noon
Paterson, N.J.
Most Dear Jack:
Just received your letter which am answering immediately. Guessed you were in Mexico; this was a monumental trip, followed it on map. Lucien and I went to Mazatlan last summer also, via Ajijic and Guadalajara (Ajijic you know rendezvous for Subterraneans). But hardly nobody goes to Culican, through Sonora, ever, it’s all unknown.
I must be the leak somehow. Unless impossible through presence of Kells’ wife, I will cover your tracks totally by announcing to world (Seymour [Wyse] in London, [Bob] Burford in Paris, everyone in N.Y.) that you have shipped out.
Your sight of Mexico is the greatest I have ever read.
“I thought I was beyond Darwin’s chain” also eerie expression, any more stanzas of that?
I know that rock in Neal, that is him in his fate which makes love impossible to go beyond; but that is OK because there is where another unknown Neal begins (and writes), and who knows what self that hood hides, what personal disgust at world, or rocky glare.
I can’t come to Mexico because I am terrified of going off into the night again, toward death maybe, or oblivion beyond the pale tenderness of New York daily life. I don’t want to feel alone in the dark at the mercy of you and Bill—for I have no money of my own—traveling deeper and farther away from world I know and love a little. Your letter was monumental and frightening to me, I wanted immediately to come on down, just like you said, happily and gaily, but instead of kicks under control I am afraid of bum kicks of police, penniless, ragged days. I don’t write much, just a few hours a day—depression, beatness, unknown; also I could not call on parents for help then, and am afraid could have to, all these things, childish and timidly pale. I remember trip with Lucien as great kicks and torment of continual threat of death. I would not be able to stand my despair if I thought of no road open but that going deeper into night. I will come down as soon as I have enough money to be able to relax. I am still traumatized and impotent with York Avenue apocalypses and jails and lawyers, [Bill] Cannastra, Joan [Burroughs]. I don’t know what I think, but your letter inspires great fear in me, for you, though I know the grandeur of the scene, and for myself, though I know if I strode into the house it would be the greatest meeting we have ever had. Ah, let me tarry awhile till my fate is more firmly fixed before I go down the other side.
My heart sank beating
and honey filled my limbs
when we lay down together
in each others arms;
there was so much gladness
bound into our embrace,
it weighed on naked thigh
as on soul’s nakedness.
Ah Davalos,84 thy look!
thy sigh, it is too late;
The heaviness is gone,
Gone into the night.
Third line from last no good, can’t find another for the moment. Ran into Dick Davalos in Remo the other night, and we stared at each other and in low voices exchanged compliments, and met in rainy night two days later on Lexington Avenue and went home and had a ball again. Almost in love again, but spontaneous sweetness of first meeti
ng does not last, the clouds come down, can’t make joy again, once satisfaction is in sight, as if the accident, and later the imagination, released more feeling than later with designed meet. I’ll see him tomorrow night and read him your letter. He asks after you, kept going to Lex Bar to find us months after, never received invite to Thanksgiving party. Explain to Bill.
[ . . . ]
When I see you will tell you about our Mazatlan, yes remember Three Islands, the greatest vision of the earth I ever had (except Harlem natch) was the great rolling plain of Spain between Tepic and Guadalajara, just a few miles outside of Tepic—we rolled down the vast slope in sunset, the biggest grassy plain I ever saw, coming down from the mountains, long masses of clouds hanging midway between earth and sky, you could see over the clouds we were on slope, and saw little lost city Tepic huddled in the distance. And do you remember, in that area, the uphill down dale road among miniature mountains, a whole little kingdom of huts off road among small jungled hill?
You are so alone your washing of feet in creek near Tenincingo in eternal afternoon, must have arrived at ripeness of alone in universe there.
Kells [Elvins] arrested sounds horrible, write me what happens to him, what he said. Give him my regards.
No news yet about Genet, however plans going to publish him in pocketbook in drugstores all over America, Carl’s idea.
Now, as I wrote to Frisco two or three weeks ago (I guess after you left). I found your first 23 pages of On the Road, Carl sent it off to Frisco, (against my advice) but it is in safe hands and I’ll write and have it returned here. If you want it write me and I’ll send it to you.
Everything at Wyn waiting on receipt of manuscript. Send on books soon as can. Nothing new there since I wrote Bill last. Also, Jack, advise you send me your book first, before Carl so I can read it immediately and prepare situation if there’s going to be trouble. I know how good it is and want to get with it soon as possible, as Carl may give trouble, being as I say caught in commercial tangle (you have no idea how tangled the commerce is), so if you please, send it on to me in Paterson, and I’ll deliver to Carl. No agent charge, etc. just want to make sure as I can that everything is going all right with publisher. Carl already worried and talks about revisions, at contract rate of 100 per month.
Nothing however is happening up here but hot air. My book not accepted yet either. Saw Louis Simpson, wanted your book, same actually with Scribner’s, so don’t worry, but I wished I had seen your contract.
I am in touch with Burford, or I wrote him, asking that I get editorship of one issue of New Story: will publish Carl, Self, You, Bill, Huncke (maybe Harrington and Holmes and Ansen) all together in one blockbusting issue.
I am increasingly interested and hung up on your idea of sketches. Please tell me contents and whereabouts of your works. My own poems are mostly just like your sketches in parts, in theory.
I enclose copy of picture you sent me, I have great beautiful enlargement and extra copies plus negative, so will never get lost. Enlargement, monumental figures in repose, on my desk in Paterson at this moment.
Your plans sound great; I promise to join you in perhaps a year when ripe time for me comes. I feel I’m missing a lot. But how can I join you when I haven’t any money at all, just meager unemployment checks and no prospects except after my own book. Can Bill and you take care of me? Will have to wait to see what your finances will be.
Tell Bill I said you shouldn’t schmeck, absolutely not, Jack, Ti-Jean, do not schmeck around.
Yes do not tolerate changes in book except possibly in clearing up some references or sentences: for instance, I have a little difficulty understanding your letters (mostly possibly because of Aesopian language talking about T. [marijuana] and O. [opium])
Did you get my last letter? to Frisco? Will Neal forward that?
All right, will show Carl your letter, and will report developments as they develop. Tell Bill nothing new, waiting for Queer. Also I sent out his short story to American Mercury, if not taken will use it for New Story or Hudson or something like that.
Stick with it everybody and for god’s sake don’t get into any trouble, it would break my heart.
Love,
Allen
You see I am hung up on commerce with publishers: if I don’t do it I know nothing would ever happen here. As soon as I establish everybody’s position and reputation, will get on better kick. But all would die in NY if I weren’t around to clean up messes. They’re all in another world.
P.S. Davalos is secret kick in NY. No mention in return letters except by code—dargelos perhaps. (La Coq du Classe). I do want to go to the Amazon, (will make it somehow). I saw Ed White, got letter from Seymour—who never says anything except “How are you old boy?” He’s going to Paris to meet Burford and Jerry Newman, who left for Paris a month ago.
Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico] to
Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, New Jersey]
May 18, 1952
Dear Allen,
Bill says he will write you a letter contesting your “fear in the dark” reasons for not coming down—while at the same time he doesn’t want you to leave until Junk or Queer is settled, natch. We want you to become big hep New York agent and later editor now, if we make money you can open yourself an office, handle the manuscript of everybody . . . Holmes, Harrington, Ansen, Neal, yourself, Carl, Hunk. By the way where is Hunkey?
I myself am leery of going into dark jungles with Bill . . . he scares me with stories of snakes . . . “they have a boa there that’s really tree-bound till the age of so and so then it takes to the water” (in a bored yawning voice). And the malarial mosquito takes a dip with its ass when biting you, it’s different from regulars; and the danger of sleeping on the ground is a certain kind of viper with so much venom that there’s no cure, you just die. And the Auca, man-killing tribe; and lawless provinces and lawless towns like Manta on the coast; and the staple diet in jungle is monkeys, etc. But I will go if I have the dough, of course. At some point, keep this to yourself, possibly en route from Ecuador to Paris, I will zoom thru New York for a week of reunions and kicks on the sly, mebbe a month hey?
I know you will love On the Road85—please read it all, no one has read it all yet . . . Neal had no time, nor Bill. On the Road is inspired in its entirety . . . I can tell now as I look back on the flood of language. It is like Ulysses and should be treated with the same gravity. If Wyn or Carl insist on cutting it up to make the “story” more intelligible I’ll refuse and offer them another book which I’ll commence writing at once, because now I know where I’m headed. I have Doctor Sax ready to go now . . . or The Shadow of Doctor Sax, I’ll simply blow on the vision of the Shadow in my 13th and 14th years on Sarah Ave. Lowell, culminated by the myth itself as I dreamt it in Fall 1948 . . . angles of my hoop-rolling boyhood as seen from the shroud. Also, of course, now that On the Road is in, I’m going to start sketching here in Mexico . . . for the general basis of my Fellaheen south of the border book about Indians, Fellaheen problems, and Bill the last of the American Giants among them . . . actually a book about Bill. That’s two things. And at any leisured moment near libraries (say, if I lived on the Columbia campus, or in Paterson, or a cheap room near 42nd and 5th Avenue) I’m going to execute my Civil War novel which I want to parallel Tolstoy’s 1812 hang-ups in 1850s, in other words a historical novel, a big personal gone with the wind about Lucien-like cavalry heroes and Melville-like Bartlebies of draft riots and Whitman-like nurses and especially dumb soldiers from the clay hills staring into the gray mist and void of Chickamauga at dawn. Learning facts of Civil War as I go along. But I’m not sure which (of the first two) ideas will be completed first . . . should be Doctor Sax.
Now here is what sketching is. In the first place, you remember last September when Carl first ordered the Neal book and wanted it . . . Sketching came to me in full force on October 25th, the day of the evening Dusty [Moreland] and I went to Poughkeepsie with [Jack] Fitzgerald—so strongly it di
dn’t matter about Carl’s offer and I began sketching everything in sight, so that On the Road took its turn from conventional narrative survey of road trips etc. into a big multi-dimensional conscious and subconscious character invocation of Neal in his whirlwinds. Sketching (Ed White casually mentioned it in 124th [Street] Chinese restaurant near Columbia, “Why don’t you just sketch in the streets like a painter but with words?”) which I did . . . everything activates in front of you in myriad profusion, you just have to purify your mind and let it pour the words (which effortless angels of the vision fly when you stand in front of reality) and write with 100% personal honesty both psychic and social etc. and slap it all down shameless, willy-nilly, rapidly until sometimes I got so inspired I lost consciousness I was writing. Traditional source: Yeats’ trance writing, of course. It’s the only way to write. I haven’t sketched in a long time now and have to start again because you get better with practice. Sometimes it is embarrassing to write in the street or anywhere outside but it’s absolute . . . it never fails, it’s the thing itself natch.
Do you understand sketching?—same as poetry you write—also never overdo it, you should normally get pooped in fifteen minutes’ straight scribbling—by that time I have a chapter and I feel a little crazy for having written it . . . I read it and it seems like the confessions of an insane person . . . then next day it reads like great prose, oh well. And just like you say the best things we write are always the most suspected . . . I think the greatest line in On the Road (tho you’ll disagree) is (apart of course from description of the Mississippi River “Lester is just like the river, the river starts in near Butte Montana in frozen snow caps (Three Forks) and meanders on down across states and entire territorial areas of dun bleak land with hawthorn crackling in the sleet, picks up rivers at Bismarck, Omaha and St. Louis just north, another at Kay-ro, another in Arkansas, Tennessee, comes deluging on New Orleans with muddy news from the land and a roar of subterranean excitement that is like the vibration of the entire land sucked on its gut in mad midnight, fevered, hot, the big mudhole rank clawpole old frogular pawed-soul titanic Mississippi from the North full of wires, cold wood and horn.”)
