Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  Peter’s [Orlovsky] wandering around NYC now and from last letter can’t find anyone home. He’ll be here August late or September early.

  [ . . . ]

  Lovelovelove

  Lovedog

  Allen

  Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico] to

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

  Sunday Aug 7—’55

  212 Orizaba St.

  Mexico DF, Mexico

  Dear Allen:

  Am down here with Bill Garver—got routed off my Western course hitch hiking across horrible Texas and came down for kicks—but still en route Frisco, will be there September—mainly I want a full penicillin treatment for my leg here, minus American doctor bills—as I get older leg is more persistent—Bill Garver and I found old friends of Bill B’s and Bill G. is straight—I have no eyes for anything but occasional drinking, got sick first day on shit. Feel aimless, ephemeral, inconceivably sad, don’t know where I’m going, or why. Wish I was in Frisco now but such a long trip. Will make it to Nogales on SP railroad of Mexico for $10—accompanied as far as Culiacan by Bill—dig—in about a month. Meanwhile I been sleeping on Bill’s floor. Tomorrow I get rooftop adobe. All I want as far as life-plans are concerned from here on out, is compassionate, contented solitude—Bhikkuhood is so hard to make in the West—it will have to be some American streamlined Bhikkuhood, because so far all I’ve done is attract attention. Maybe we go to NY together at Xmas—My mother may be there again—I am sick with dysentery, write me a letter. Bill sends you his warmest regards.

  Jack (Beat)

  Message from Bill [Burroughs]: “I wrote you a letter a month ago and I thought you might answer it.” P.S. “For Krissakes don’t fool around with O or H in California, worst state in the Union.” “Send him my regards.”—He is in bed reading Time—

  Old Dave died, a year ago—the

  Old Ike of Bill’s book.—His wife

  Is the most beautiful—wow—

  What an Indian and what a

  High priestess Billy Holiday—

  Her name on the street: Saragossa—

  Like Genet Hero name—

  I fell in love with her

  For an afternoon—

  I’ve met Miss Green

  Thru her and agree with

  you, she is a drag.—

  Don’t get mad at me,

  I’ll be there in a month—

  Write your plans—

  Hello to Old Continuous Neal—

  Conscious continual compassion and ordinary contentedness for whatever way of making it,—I mean, simple kicks,—quiet—what more will we need? I meditate, rest my belly, pray, eat, sleep, masturbate and pace, till my time of now is up.

  J.

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to

  Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico]

  before Aug. 15, 1955

  Dear Jack:

  Received your letter several days ago, then Peter Orlovsky blew into SF with kid brother, fifteen years old hungup on toilet rituals, and getting everybody settled.

  Robert LaVigne the painter is somewhere near Mazatlan, if I get his address I’ll send it to you, on your way up you can sleep on his floor and eat.

  If you still have dysentery, you know the Enteroviaforma brownpill cure, if it persists I understand a heavy shot of antibiotics is good—Terramyacin, I believe.

  I enclose first draft scribble notes of a poem I was writing, nearer in your style than anything. My book has fifty pages complete and another fifty to go still I think. It won’t be finished by summer end. I will unless you persuade me that my sight saver lies elsewhere go to Berkeley, I found a cheap house ($35 per month) one room, a Shakespearean Arden cottage with brown shingles and flowers all about, big sweet garden, private, apricot tree, silence, a kitchen and bathroom too, windows on sunlight, near Shattuck (Key System trolley) Avenue, six blocks from school, perfect place to retreat be quiet, which is my desire since I am more absorbed in writing than before. I will have to go to work in compassionate hospital possibly to support self, and start MA work, course on Anglo Saxon they require and whatnot, not, and so will be alone there and so you will be welcome to settle there for one year, two years, a month, however long, there’ll be all foods around, I eat well, little money, but enough to get into SF, we’ll make out alright. I will be here at 1010 Montgomery Street for three more weeks or perhaps more, and move across bay around Sept. 5. Neal has apt in town for you to stay in if you want to flop over in city anytime. My original invitation to come stay here etc. still same except now the cottage with garden makes it more Shakespearean Bhikku retired, better.

  An art gallery here asked me to arrange poetry reading program this fall [this was to become the famous Six Gallery reading], maybe you and I and Neal one night give a program; also we can record and broadcast whatever we want on Berkeley radio station KPFA.

  I have been seeing big Berkeley professors but I am anonymous nobody and can impress no one with nothing so I will have to work for a year, after I can have money from schools and make it thru PhD’s Fulbrights to Asia Harvards wherever I hope. I guess I have to do this route for the moment, otherwise just work anywhere when money runs out and not be preparing for anything as far as money future. What you think?

  Letter from Bill, he wants me to go to South America bisexual tribes, but how can I? no gold.

  Come up here keep me company, there’s no one to talk to. I am continuing Surangama Sutra. Also I am reading surrealist poetry and Lorca, translating Catullus from Latin.

  I will see [Karena] Shields the Mexico woman and tell her you’ll leave your address at the U.S. embassy for her, she’ll probably pass thru Mexico City in a week or two.

  I was thinking, would you be able to order Mescaline Sulfate from the Delta Drug Co. thru Mexican pharmacy and bring it up here? I’ll send check for that, find out? Delta Chemical Works, 23 West 60th Street, NY 23, NY, it costs $7.00 a small bottle.

  I’ll write soon. Write, come for sure.

  Love

  Allen

  PS: apropos messages from Bill Garver??? I didn’t receive letter from him in last two months. I exchange regularly with Burroughs. I tried some “aich”111 here but so expensive, a drag. Bring codeinettas up with you, a few tubes, yes? Regards to Garver.

  Ed Woods, witness to Joan [Burroughs]’s death is here in town tending bar at The Place, main North Beach bar, and Sandy Jakobson, friend to Kells [Elvins], also in town on aforementioned radio station KPFA. [Chris] MacClaine is a cook-waiter at The Place also aforementioned.

  I also want to get piano and study basic music, write blues poems.

  Since Peter been away I’ve been writing a lot, solitude after all this year is good for me though I go blue depression mad in it too. I can’t stand life.

  Don’t get mad at me, come when thou wilst, don’t come only on account of Eugene’s $25, but come anyway, soonest, make it in peaceful milk in Shakespearean house.

  I am trying to shepherd fifteen year old [Lafcadio] Orlovsky around thru life right now, like being married and having overgrown problem child, crazy kicks, pathos of real life. They’ll take an apartment in town here, I’ll move to Berkeley and get away from it all.

  Guy Wernham the translator of Lautréamont is in furnished room across street, comes over and translates Genet for me, Genet poetry, drinks tea and shudders dignified and lost like Bill, looks like a sort of Bill without Bill’s genius charm.

  I’m alright, actually sort of happy.

  Also we’ll have a car to loll in.

  Love

  Ginsberg

  Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico] to

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

  August

  (not April)

  19, 1955

  c/o WM Garver

  212 Orizaba St.

  Mexico DF

  Dear Allen:

  Did you see Alan Harrington’s review in Time magazine for Aug. 22-? Knopf has brough
t out his Saga, remember it? He seems to have compromised, by changing title from An American Comedy, to Revelations of Dr. Modesto . . . They make fun of it, Time and Newsweek, as they do of all current literature, as though the fact that it was current contemporary made it harmless.

  Meanwhile, the geniuses of United Press keep turning it out pure. Lucien wrote: “I was going to sell your (seaman’s) papers (that I left at his house) to an African shipjumper but he said they were no good” and Hudson writes: “Are you going all over that ancient quiet land, Mexico?”

  Myself I have just knocked off 150 bloody poetic masterpieces in Mexico City Blues, each one of uniform length and writing. It’s an easy world, hard to die in—

  Garver sends his best.

  I don’t want to see the Senora—I won’t move from Bill’s pad. I am hungup and very high on Mexican. Does Robert LaVigne know Miss Green and all the other maids of honor? (Be sure to tell me).

  I’ll be in Frisco Sept. 15 or Oct. 1st—you be in Berkeley I find you. Peter sounds like the idea I had for Peter Martin in sequel to Town and City, with all brothers gone mad. I’m sure he’s a saint and would never make fun—of him or of fifteen year old brother.

  Your Howl For Carl Solomon is very powerful, but I don’t want it arbitrarily negated by secondary emendations made in time’s reconsidering backstep. I want your lingual spontaneity or nothing, that goes for you and Gregory Corso, I won’t read hackled handicapped poetry manuscripts.

  Send Robert LaVigne’s address (I want to swim a few days in Mazatlan) and some spontaneous pure poetry, original manuscript of Howl, I’ll be headed out sometime Sept. 1 or 15th.

  Fuck Carl Solomon. He’s a voyeur in the madhouse. He’s all right. Give my love to Al Sublette and Neal. Tell Neal that I still love him dearly and shall always, he’s my brother all right.

  Garver is great guy misunderstood by Burroughs who didn’t listen because of Viennese preoccupations. Garver knew a Jewish promoter who conned his analyst out of $25,000 after the initial fee. Don’t give me that shit about Innisfree.

  Will read your poem again,—bring suggestion, which is, the first spout is the only spout, the rest is time’s tired faucet—etc.

  Love to you too

  Jack

  P.S. [ . . . ] And—I like, in Howl, “with a vision of ultimate cunt and come”—and—“waving genitals and manuscripts” (which is like your prose about Peter hitchhiking Texas with Illuminations under arm)—and especially I like “died in Denver again” (leave my Dying Denvers) and “self-delivered truth’s final l obotomy”.

  Yes, I would agree with you that going to Univ. of Calif. for an M.A. or for anything is a good idea, it’s your proper atmosphere, don’t be afraid of becoming big college professor savant about literature and Buddhism and Oriental Art poet and critic like Cowley, Allen Ginsberg. Cowley and I walkin in the Village in June and Meyer Schapiro passes by, doesn’t recognize me, or remember, but says, “Malcolm Cowley” and I say “Meyer Schapiro” on the street,—weird scene.

  [ . . . ]

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to

  Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico]

  1010 Montgomery

  August 25, 1955

  Dear Jack:

  [ . . . ]

  The pages I sent you of Howl (right title)112 are the first pages put down, as is. I recopied them and sent you the 100% original draft. There is no pre-existent version, I typed it up as I went along, that’s why it’s so messy. What I have here is all copies cleaned and extended. What you have is what you want.

  I realize how right you are, that was the first time I sat down to blow, it came out in your method, sounding like you, an imitation practically. How far advanced you are on this. I don’t know what I’m doing with poetry. I need years of isolation and constant everyday writing to attain your volume and freedom and knowledge of the form.

  [ . . . ]

  We wandered on peyote all downtown, P&I [Peter and I], met Betty Keck and saw Moloch Molochsmoking building in red glare downtown St. Francis Hotel, with robot upstairs eyes and skullface, in smoke, again. And I saw in me and he a void under the knowledged, of each other.

  And then did [Meyer] Schapiro recognize you?

  Ask Garver if possible to order the mescaline, leave him the Delta Co. address, and bring news, so I can order. One first arrest in California this last month on possession of peyote. Chap in San Mateo. Anonymous hipster, furnished room.

  Remember cheap bus with wetbacks crossing desert from West Coast Pan-Am highway (inquire Guaymas, Culiacan or Hermosillo) to very Mexicali, thus cutting out all U.S. travel. Also beautiful busride crost Sierra Madres from Durango to Mazatlan, about sixteen hours each. Mexicali bus connects with main highway at Santa Ana I think.

  I have no money but if in bad trouble $$ write immediately and I’ll tap Neal or someone, and send instructions where to send it.

  Bern Porter or City Lights bookstore here will publish a book of poems for me, possibly also for you, to be investigated. I had a little poem in small magazine in Southern California and my father sent me a copy republished from NY Herald Tribune, they do that every Sunday. Strange. Incomprehensible note about “The Shrouded Stranger,” of all things.

  One hundred fifty poems?! But I’ve labored all month putting together twenty little piffles! Fifty pages so far plus Howl.

  Neal is off the extraboard on a regular job, so can schedule dates and nights.

  As I say you have the original manuscript of Howl.

  Blues samples lovely. I wrote Bill. He not dead. You know (snicker) I cut out truth’s etc. lobotomy in new version. We’ll talk.

  Love

  Allen

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] to

  Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico]

  August 30, 1955

  1010 Montgomery

  August 30

  Dear Almond Crackerjax:

  [ . . . ]

  City Lights bookstore here putting out pamphlets—fifty short pages—of local poets and one of W. C. Williams reprint and one of Cummings and will put out Howl (under that title) next year, one booklet for that poem, nothing else—it will fill a booklet.

  I move in two days to Berkeley cottage with flowers and quiet. Send more MexCity Blues if you stay long. Regards to Garver. September heat in SF turning milk sour.

  “What Sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed in their skulls and ate their brains and imagination?

  Moloch Moloch Solitude Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under stairways! Old men weeping in parks!

  Moloch! Moloch! Skeleton treasuries! Ghostly banks! Eyeless capitols! Robot apartments! Granite phalluses and monstrous bombs!

  Visions! Omens! Hallucinations! Gone down the American River!

  Dreams! Miracles! Ecstasies! The whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!” etc.

  Love,

  Allen

  Jack Kerouac [Mexico City, Mexico] to

  Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California]

  September 1-6, 1955

  Dear Allen:

  (Thanks very much for the mad money—now I go mad)

  Thou possessor of the tenderest heart and the highest wisdom. If I can ever crawl to your cottage of Blakean Horror in Berkeley (Yak!) and mack the bread-crumbs off your bone, Wak! Lak! The boy lak! Smak! Trak! Shak! Yok! pock—smock—there’ll be a lotta typin to be done.

  [ . . . ]

  I have good news. Mr. Cowley got me Academy of Arts and Letters loot, to tune of 2 C’s, which I get in monthly checks of 50 bucks, which I convert into traveler’s checks and writ. Also sold “Mexican Girl” to Paris Review $50. Have big warm letter from Malcolm [Cowley]—and now he will write foreword for Beat Generation for Viking. I’m driving myself crazy Miss Greening. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I am.

  Need a typewriter, need friendship of you.

  [ . . . ]

  Friday Sept. 2. Threw green down the toilet, getting ready to visit you
. No mescaline, man got arrested on the border with mescaline last week.—Want to get there.

  My legs are very bad again, penicillin didn’t work with Miss Green.

  Holmes wrote me.—Also, publishers of Suzuki in N.Y. (Philos. Library) wanted me to guarantee 600 copies before publishing my “very well written” Buddha-book. I don’t know no 600 people with $3.50. Will change title to Wake Up.

  Saturday. Miss Green again, hard girl. Will leave one week from today, take train to Santa Ana, bus to Mexicali, bum to LA, Zipper to Frisco. Will come back for winter in Acapulco-district grass-hut, when we finish our talks in Berkeley and I have done some work and some roaming around Frisco. No typewriter, no imagination, I apologize for my poor quivering meat.

  Afternoon—Now I’m drinking whisky like Lucien and flipping. I am bored. Garver talks but not to me. Wish Bill B. was here for old-time charm kicks at Mexico. He hasn’t answered my letter of Aug. 30, written with Garver. If he got disemboweled by Berbers at Ouedzen I say he deserves it for snooping around and in Eternity for surreptitious mutilation of cats.113 I can just see him being tipped over by non-committal disinterested Nomads and sliced nonchalantly as the afternoon drones on . . . Bill is saying “What? Wait? Where?” and he suddenly is face to face with his romance, a Arab hatchet.