Read Online Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg by Jack Kerouac - Free Book Online

they’re getting him a job out of a jail agency of some sort. No peep out of Neal himself, however. The Southern Pacific is the most wonderful railroad in the world incidentally . . . on a Sunday morning, riding down through the sunny San Joaquin Valley of grapes and women-with-bodies-like-grapes, I reclined on a flatcar reading the Sunday funnies with the other boys, and the brakemen smiled at us and waved cheerful. It is the hobo’s favorite road. Anybody with any sense in California can ride between Frisco and LA endlessly on that road, once a week if they want to, and nobody will ever bother them. When the train stops at a siding, you can jump off and help yourself to fruit if you’re near a field. So wonderful Neal is working for a wonderful railroad, in the Saroyan country . . . (if there’s any beastly murderousness it’s not my fault or Neal’s or Saroyan’s.) The Santa Fe brakemen will kill you if they catch you and if they have enough clubs. But not the SP.
    I had a season, Allen, I had a season. It lasted exactly four days. She was eighteen years old, I saw her on the street, was riven, and followed her into a roller skating rink. I tried to roller skate with her and fell all over the place. Young and beautiful of course.—Tony Monacchio, Lucien’s friend (and mine) was conversant with my beautiful season . . . He thought that the girl, Beverly, was too dumb for me, not vocal enough. I hated the thought of it . . . you can’t imagine how madly in love I was, just like with Celine [Young], only worse, because she was greater. But finally she rejected me because “she didn’t know me, she didn’t know anything about me.” I tried to get her over to my house to meet my mother for God’s sake but she was afraid I was trying to trick her, apparently. Sweet love softly denied. She thought I was some sort of gangster . . . she kept hinting. She also thought I was “strange” because I didn’t have a job. She herself has two jobs and works herself to a bone, and can’t understand what “writing” is. Tony Monacchio and I found Lucien dead drunk in Tony’s room after a party—on the night that Lucien was supposed to fly to Providence for his 2-weeks vacation. We helped him to the Air Lines bus. He was bleary-eyed, blind, wearing brown-and-white saddle shoes like a Scott Fitzgerald character of the 20s. I suddenly realized that Lucien is drinking too much after all and that Barbara [Hale] 18 is not doing anything about it. I mean he was really sick. Tony said to him, “Jack’s girl is sweet and beautiful but dumb.” And Lucien, out of this dizzy sickness of his, said—“Everybody in the world is sweet and beautiful but dumb.” Allen, these are the things, these are the things, don’t worry about the theory of writing, not at all. Then Lucien thanked us for escorting him to the “airplane” as he called the bus, and there was a farewell. That afternoon my little girl rejected me. So now, how are you? How’s everybody in the sweet beautiful dumb world?
    Jack
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    Allen Ginsberg [n.p., New York, New York?] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., New York, New York?]
    after May 18, 1948
    Monday Night : 1:30
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    Dear Jack:
    I got your letter Sat. evening—I had been in Paterson for a few days. I will be in this weekend (in N.Y.).
    You seemed overly proud that it was “ancient material.” What I was saying in part (lesser part) was that it was not recognizable (to me in your prose) but but but. This is not the same old maturity that I (as [Bill] Gilmore) have been talking about before. This is something I wouldn’t have the slightest idea if Gilmore would understand and don’t care much. But you are right, perhaps it’s under my nose in you. This is a kick I don’t want to continue.
    School is over and I have been reading Dante, which I have found very inspiring. I finished the