by Barry Miles
It is an indication of how well known Burroughs became at Ali’s that one day, when Kenneth Tindall asked Bill if he knew where they could get some kif, Bill told them, “Well maybe I do.” Tindall wrote, “When he talked he sounded just like my grandpa from Kansas.” He told them to go over to Ali’s and say Burroughs sent them. They did, and felt uncomfortable surrounded by Moroccans and Algerians, but sure enough, in came an effeminate American in tight white pants, tennis shoes, and a turtleneck sweater. Tindall wrote, “He came sashaying in and plunked a little plastic bag on the table in front of us, and we gave him the amount agreed on, and that was that. Man, I tell you […] the types Burroughs knew!”25
At the end of March, Allen wrote Peter how on the first “dreamy warm day of spring” he and Bill left their coats at home and went for a long walk through the Jardin du Luxembourg, meeting Gregory Corso and a French girlfriend. They were joined by Iris Owens, an American who wrote pornography for Girodias under the name of Harriet Daimler; a drummer named Al “the Shades” Levitt; someone known as Money; Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and his wife; John Balf, who lived at the hotel; and Mason Hoffenberg, the coauthor of Candy with Terry Southern, “out for a junk cure constitutional walk.” Mason Hoffenberg, one of the funniest men on the Left Bank, agreed with Burroughs about the new generation. Allen wrote, “Mason also talking about how everyone, underground, getting hip or enlightened while both Official America & Russia put out more shit trying to keep war going between each other.”26 They all bought ice creams and Bill entertained them with stories about man-eating piranha fish and sharks. The meeting with Iris Owens was useful because she was an adviser to Girodias and had already recommended that he should publish Burroughs’s work.
There was also interest from the States in Burroughs’s writing. Irving Rosenthal, editor of the Chicago Review, published an extract from The Naked Lunch in the spring 1958 issue and in May wrote that he liked it so much that they would publish it serially if no one else would. Allen typed up a chapter for him and, good to his word, Rosenthal published “Chapter 2 of Naked Lunch” in the autumn 1958 issue.
Jean-Jacques Lebel was delighted with his new friends but was concerned that they stayed very much in English-speaking circles. He thought they should meet some of the great French artists and poets, which, coming from an artistic family, he was able to arrange. In mid-June 1958, his parents were giving a party at their house on avenue President Wilson in the sixteenth arrondissement. Among the invited guests were Man Ray, Benjamin Péret, Marcel Duchamp, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and other luminaries of the world of art and literature. Jean-Jacques begged his parents to allow him to invite Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Corso, and though they had never heard of them, they agreed. Burroughs, as usual, wore a smart suit and Ginsberg managed a shirt and tie. Lebel got Gregory to comb his hair. The first incident came on the way in, when Gregory vomited on the staircase and Jean-Jacques’s mother insisted that her son clean it up, that it was not a job for the concierge. After washing Gregory’s puke off the stairs, they joined the party. About fifty people were there, everyone standing. They were introduced to Péret, Duchamp, Man Ray, Breton’s wife (Breton was in bed with flu), and all got very drunk, mixing red wine with whiskey.
Then toward the end, as people began leaving, Allen and Gregory, holding hands, approached Duchamp, who was in a chair talking to someone. Allen got down on his knees and began kissing Duchamp’s knees. Duchamp looked embarrassed, but worse was to come. Thinking to imitate the Dadaist action of cutting off people’s ties, Gregory had gone to the kitchen, found a pair of scissors, and proceeded to cut off Duchamp’s tie. Teeny Duchamp started screaming, but Duchamp understood immediately what he was doing and reassured her, “Non, c’est très Dada!” Jean-Jacques’s father was less sympathetic. Jean-Jacques remembered, “My father comes up to me and he says, ‘Hah, your friends, huh? Where did you pick up these fucking clochards?’ He didn’t say it but his eyes said it. I was all upset.”27 In fact Duchamp found the whole thing amusing. Jean-Jacques was close to both Duchamp and Man Ray and saw them at least twice a week. They never failed to ask after his American beatniks. Duchamp spoke excellent English, but he was shy, and though Burroughs would have liked to have spoken with him, nothing more than pleasantries were exchanged, though, as Allen wrote Peter, “We got drunk and conversed with Duchamp, finally kissed him and made him kiss Bill, which he did—they are very similar in temperament.” Burroughs’s embarrassment at the antics of his friends can only be guessed at, though some of Burroughs’s perceived lack of exuberance was probably due to the fact that by the end of May he was back on paregoric and addicted again.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jacques Stern had psychic powers… I was easily impressed in those days.1
1. Enter Jacques Stern
In the middle of June 1958, Ginsberg wrote to Peter to say, “A new strange cripple boy appeared on scene. Frenchman named Jacques Stern, went to Harvard & is very intelligent & serious… he and Bill now good friends & sit & talk junk by the hour.”2 It was Gregory who first met Stern near the Jardin du Luxembourg. Stern had just been to see his analyst, who was supposed to be helping him to kick junk. He was a polio victim and was walking with two canes and two aluminum braces. As he struggled to get into his specially modified dark blue Bentley, Gregory approached and asked if he needed any help. Stern looked at him and asked, “Who the fuck are you?” Gregory could spot a junkie at a hundred meters and they immediately began talking about heroin. They went to a bar on the corner and talked for an hour, then Gregory asked him, “Would you like to meet a very wise man?” They drove to rue Gît-le-Coeur but the car blocked up the whole street so they had to park on the corner, then Gregory carried him to the door. Burroughs was sitting in the bar at one of the tables when they arrived. He remembered, “Now here comes Gregory and this almost transparent green demon on two crutches. It was Jacques Stern. Sinister music in the background.”3 Stern recalled, “And I got to talk to Burroughs. […] I don’t care what you say, but Burroughs is the most fascinating character I’ve met in my whole life, period!”4
Jacques Stern was the son of the Countess Mathilde Simone de Leusse and Jacques Leon Stern, a prominent Jewish banker possibly related to the Rothschild family—Jacques certainly claimed he was. He was twenty-six when he met Burroughs, though even his date of birth is in dispute. He and his American wife, Dini, lived in some splendor in an eight-room apartment at 8 rue du Cirque, one block from the Elysée Palace, complete with butler and maid, a library of first editions, and a crystal chandelier in the dining room. He began visiting Burroughs at the Beat Hotel, carried up the twisting stairs by Gregory or Allen, and would sit on Bill’s bed, discussing literature, philosophy, and, most of all, their great shared interest, drugs. Stern held little gatherings at the rue du Cirque in which he would give everyone a joint or a little bag of heroin. He was very generous.
Stern had a great friend named Harry Phipps who was even wealthier. He had the whole second floor of the Hôtel Lambert, a magnificent mansion at 2 rue Saint-Louis en l’Ile built by Le Vau in 1640. Voltaire had lived there for fifteen years from 1742. Now Burroughs found himself leaning against the marble fireplace, drink in hand, blending in perfectly, admiring the piano that had supposedly belonged to Chopin. Either Stern would invite them all to his place, or they would meet at Phipps’s place. Phipps became something of a patron to Bill, Allen, and Gregory, supplying them with huge amounts of cocaine, paying Gregory’s rent, once showing up with three suits he no longer wore; Bill’s didn’t fit, but it was a nice gesture. Bill was naturally intrigued to know him because the Phipps family owned a third of Palm Beach, where Bill’s parents had their Cobble Stone Gardens antiques shop on Phipps Plaza.
Bill attended a number of dinner parties at the rue du Cirque. The food was mediocre, the butler was rumored to have been castrated by the Nazis, and Jacques sat at the head of the table making unpleasant remarks about his wife. Dini remonstrated by say
ing, “Well, this isn’t very nice for Bill to hear.” Bill found himself caught where he least liked to be, in the middle of a domestic argument, but he continued to visit.
Jacques’ wife disliked Allen and Gregory, who were too ill-mannered and uncouth for her, but Bill she liked. The feeling was mutual. Bill told Allen, “I think she is a really nice person, and I have come to like her very much.”5 She took him to lunch at Brasserie Lipp to talk about Jacques. Marcellin Cazes, who ran the Brasserie Lipp,6 hated the sight of Bill, who had dined there several times, but on the strength of Dini’s good looks they were seated in the back room—not as good as the front room but not the Siberia of upstairs. She told Bill how unpleasant Stern was to live with. “He’s a monster,” she said. “Being in the same room with him is like being with death itself. When you are alone with him, the bloom and the feeling of death that comes off him is unbelievable. When you’re in his power it’s terrible.”7
She told Bill quite frankly that her profession was marrying rich men. “I don’t have very long to go, I’m twenty-seven, I think I made a mistake with Jacques.” She said she had had another offer from a St. Louis businessman, but, “Oh my God, the idea of living in St. Louis.” However, she now thought it might have been a mistake to turn him down. “It might well,” said Bill.
Because Stern handed out so much free, high-quality heroin, Bill soon found himself addicted. Both he and Gregory Corso were shooting up. Stern was much more strung out and had been trying to kick for some time. He volunteered to pay Bill’s way if he would accompany him to London to take the apomorphine cure that Bill recommended. Bill made the arrangements and Stern traveled to London, where he rented a two-bedroom luxury flat at 2 Devonshire Street in Marylebone. Bill joined him a few days later in the middle of October, after having stopped off at rue du Cirque to collect two hundred dollars in expenses from Dini.
At first the trip was satisfactory. Burroughs was cured quickly, and they enjoyed being in London together. One evening Burroughs took Stern to the Colony Room, a members-only drinking club in Soho where they ran into Francis Bacon. Stern told Victor Bockris, “I don’t know how Burroughs knew Bacon, but he did and Bacon was there. Bacon, who is not only, as far as I am concerned, maybe the greatest painter of his time, he was also fantastically versed in everything. Extremely brilliant who knew everything about everything.” Stern was in need of a fix and would not have stayed for more than ten minutes had it not been for Bacon’s conversation. He stayed more than three hours, listening to them talk. “Burroughs and Bacon are like Gods. They were friends. I just stood there listening to both of them, but mostly Bacon. It was unbelievable.”8
Problems arose between them because Bill objected to Stern missing Dr. Dent’s appointments and not giving the apomorphine method a fair chance. But Stern argued that in order to give it a fair chance he had to really want to be off drugs and he didn’t really. Because he couldn’t go himself, he sent Bill out to hustle doctors for morphine. In addition Stern was high on cocaine most of the time, which made communication difficult. Bill regarded Dr. Dent as a friend and could see that he had a strong dislike of Stern even though he continued to treat him. Then Stern began the games that rich people like to play.
Bill, I left some change here on the table. Did you happen to see it?
Well, no I didn’t.
I just thought you might have seen it.
No.
Well, listen Bill, if you need any money, don’t hesitate to let me know.
Next he accused Bill of being a con man. He suddenly yelled, “You son of a bitch, you’re conning me! You sneaked around to Dini and got two hundred dollars off her.”9 This was the money he had originally agreed to pay for Bill to accompany him, but Stern was on a cocaine high. He told Bill to get out. Bill went to his room, packed his things, and wrote him a note saying, “Classifying me as a conniving con man is one of the most grotesque pieces of miscasting since Tyrone Power played Jesse James.”10 Bill walked out onto the street and on the corner of Great Portland Street the Evening Standard billboard read, “Tyrone Power Dead in Madrid.” It was November 15, 1958.
Back in Paris, Dini could stand it no more and she and Jacques broke up. For some reason, Bill seemed immune to Jacques’s lies and tantrums and continued to see him even after the London debacle. With divorce pending, Jacques quickly ran out of ready money and asked Bill to go over to the rue du Cirque to try and smuggle out one of the Molière first editions. Astonishingly, Bill was prepared to be ordered about like this and did as he was asked. He greeted Dini—“Hello, Dini, nice to see you. I hope this whole rift between you and Jacques can be solved”—and began to sidle toward the library. She caught on right away; Bill’s play-acting was utterly transparent. “Stop!” she said. “I know what you’re here for. You want to get the first editions. Well, instead of that, you’re going to get out!”11 Bill conceded defeat and left. Stern was outraged and called him a “no-good dolt.” Bill later admitted that his heart wasn’t in it, but he’d done his best.
2. Louis-Ferdinand Céline
For Allen Ginsberg, his season in France rushed to an end. He suggested that Burroughs return to the States with him, but Bill replied, quoting Saint-John Perse, “I have told no-one to wait.”12 Allen wanted to see everyone, but only in his last few weeks did he meet many of the writers and artists he had long read and talked about. He received an invitation to visit André Breton but couldn’t understand the French on his postcard and so missed the appointment, but he did run into Tristan Tzara at the Deux Magots, and met all the painters at Robert Lebel’s party. Burroughs was largely indifferent to meeting other writers because of the language problem but was enthusiastic at the idea of visiting Louis-Ferdinand Céline, whom he regarded, along with Jean Genet, as one of the most important writers alive. Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan were two of the books he had lent Allen and Jack Kerouac when he first got to know them back in 1944.
The visit was arranged for them by Michel Mohrt, a journalist friend at Le Figaro. All Ginsberg had to do was telephone to fix a time. Céline, speaking hesitantly in a shy, reticent, strangely youthful voice, said, “Anytime Tuesday after four.” On July 8, Burroughs and Ginsberg took a suburban train out to Meudon, about halfway to Versailles to the southwest of Paris. Céline and his wife, Lucette Almanzor, lived in a large mansarded villa set on a cliff, overlooking a great loop of the Seine and the distant spires of Paris. Bill and Allen were greeted at the gate by barking dogs. Céline came out and locked the dogs up. “Are they dangerous?” asked Allen. “No,” Céline said, “I keep them for the noise,” but he did always take them with him on a leash to the village to protect him “from the Jews. The postmaster destroys my letters. The pharmacist won’t fill my prescription.”13 The dogs continued to bark and howl in their compound. Burroughs could see that Céline was the sort of person you could put down anywhere and he would immediately be on bad terms with his neighbors.
Although it was the middle of summer, Céline had several scarves wrapped around his neck and wore three unraveling, moth-eaten sweaters. He had long hair and there was brown mold under his fingernails. He was sixty-four years old, tall, thin, and very slight. Burroughs estimated he weighed only 125 pounds. He had gone to school in England and spoke perfectly accented English, but had not used the language for many years so they spoke in a broken mixture of French and English. Bedsprings stuck up from the overgrown grass near the gate and they sat outside on iron chairs at a rusty garden table. Madame Céline brought them glasses of beer. Céline was friendly and Allen and Bill were very respectful toward him. Céline clearly appreciated it, and the visit lasted for several hours; they got the impression that Céline did not get many visitors even though his work was enjoying a critical revival at that time.
Bill told him about his periods of addiction to morphine and Céline told the story of how a boat he was on was torpedoed. To calm the hysterical passengers he lined them up and gave them all a shot of morph
ine, but they all began vomiting because he’d given them too much. Céline and Bill discussed the various prisons they had been in, and Céline said that one could only truly know a country by seeing its prisons. Burroughs agreed. His outrage at the brutality of the American justice system was a subject that he often turned to in conversation in the sixties, in particular the fact that America was (is) the only country in the world, bar none, in which children are sentenced to die in prison with no hope of parole for homicides committed when they were thirteen or fourteen years old. It was a subject he cared about passionately.
They spoke about having a mother tongue. Céline said that it is very different if you’re told you’re going to be shot in your own language than in another language. Hearing it in your mother tongue has more impact. Bill was sure he was right about that. Naturally they discussed writing, but every writer they mentioned, Michaux, Beckett, Sartre, Céline would say, “Oh, it is nothing, it is nothing, every year new little fish in the literary pond. It is nothing. Genet is nothing!” As far as Céline was concerned, there was nobody but him. He was not self-centered, he just thought that nobody else’s work was any good, that was all. Allen had brought with him copies of Junkie, Howl, Gasoline, and On the Road, and Céline said that if he had time he would give them a glance, his English was still good enough to read, but Bill noticed that he put them to one side and doubted if he ever looked at them again.
