Lettere

by Jack Kerouac, Leopoldo Carra (Translator), Allen Ginsberg

Vere icone culturali, Jack Kerouac e Allen Ginsberg sono i nomi più celebrati della Beat Generation, legati da una profonda sintonia artistica e da un'amicizia sincera e duratura, che ha influenzato notevolmente la loro scrittura. Le quasi duecento lettere comprese in questo volume (buona parte delle quali inedite) gettano nuova luce sul loro rapporto, a partire dal 1944, quando Ginsberg era uno studente alla Columbia University, fino a poco prima della morte di Kerouac nel 1969. Uno scambio epistolare di grande fascino, che permette di conoscere dettagli delle loro vite e comprendere le loro opere come mai prima, oltre a fornirci una visione dell'America e del mondo dal dopoguerra agli anni Sessanta. Nonostante momenti di disaccordo, i due scrittori si sono ispirati reciprocamente a livello sia spirituale sia creativo e la loro corrispondenza è presto diventata un laboratorio vitale per la loro tra viaggi, amori e battaglie culturali, queste lettere appassionanti e spontanee offrono un intensissimo ritratto dei due uomini più rappresentativi di un movimento che ha dato il nome a un'intera generazione.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry, Biography, Memoir, Literature, Classics, History

831 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.

Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm no Jack Kerouac expert, but reading a guy's letters gives you keener insight into his psyche than reading his novels (and I've only read two of those: Big Sur and Dharma Bums, so what do I know). Full disclosure: I haven't even read On the Road.

Still, JK is an interesting character and Ginsberg's off the wall himself, so the back and forth was entertaining. JK was just kidding a lot when he compared himself to great writers and said he was in their league, but part of him believed it. He was a working class, blue collar, almost-maniacal writer in the same vein as another Jack, London to be exact. I thought of Martin Eden, London's autobiographical novel of becoming a writer, while reading these letters. The two Jacks would probably like each other.

The Beat thing was pushed more by Ginsberg than JK, seems, though Kerouac is credited with being the "leader," probably by dint of his tremendous output. Yeah, there's the Truman Capote crack: "That's not writing, it's typing," but there's talent there, too.

Amazingly, Ginsberg contacted fellow Joisey-type poet William Carlos Williams, who was incredibly open and helpful, working magic for the boys by reaching out to his own publishers. In fact, these two networked wonderfully. It's who you know, and they helped each other to reach upper echelons of publishing houses (well protected today, trust me) by pulling any lever they could. So there's your irony -- Beats as "outsiders" and "rebels" who were working the system mightily, old school and Establishment-style.

What's sad is how the letters change after Keroauc's almost overnight success with On the Road. Initially, a rush of joy and ego. And whiskey. And god knows what else. Soon, Jack cannot keep up with demands and attention. His alcoholism breaks down the pasture fence only to run wild and run free. His mind and his body begin to go to pot.

If you want a graphic example, check out two videos on YouTube. The first one, from The Steve Allen Show, shows JK still holding it together, kind of nervous, but wonderful once he begins to do his reading (to Allen's piano background, yuk, yuk). You feel sorry for the guy and want to cheer him on here.

Jack Reading on Steve Allen's Show in 1959 at Age 37

To show what fame and alcohol did to him, you need only check Jack out on William Buckley's show almost ten years later. Puffy face. Bloated belly. Smoking. Sounding half out of it and looking foolish and saying some embarrassingly bad stuff. This was filmed in Sept. of 1968, only 13 months before he died of a stomach hemorrhage (cause = alcohol) at age 47.

You can see it all coming in the letters, sadly. But you'll know your man by the end -- both of them (Jack and Allen as well as Jack Before and Jack After).

[Paul Maher Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is there a point “reviewing” a collection of private letters that were never meant for publication? When the letters are written by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, twin avatars of all things Beat, who saw the best minds of their generation destroyed madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging them through the negro streets at dawn, angel-headed hipsters that burned for the starry dynamo in the machinery of night — well, the answer is a resolute YES. These letters like their respective literary works will continue to amaze, inspire, astonish, anger and inform a new generation of readers and those in the past that have turned to the Beats for inspiration.

Even as young men, Ginsberg and Kerouac were remarkably worldly and prescient in a way that enabled them to see beyond the blinkered pieties and short-sightedness of their time. After On the Road hits the street, Kerouac will remark that men can no longer look each other in the eyes without negative insinuation as Ginsberg perches on the genius jock’s shoulder and becomes, for all intents and purposes, Jack’s Jiminy Cricket. Their worldview wasn’t just informed by Columbia knowledge. They read poets like Walt Whitman and William Blake at a time when professors dismissed both as eccentric cranks. They praised Blake and Whitman to the heavens, and the revelatory swagger of each bard’s barbaric yawp blew the billowed sails of both men. The intensity of their bond, not to mention their libertine hunger for experience, raises the inevitable question: Were they lovers? Ginsberg certainly wanted to be, and unable to consummate his lust for handsome Jack, he turned to poetry instead to sort out the stumblebum of desire eating away his mortal heart. One such poem written in 1945 brings us home to the Ginsberg/Kerouac bond soon after they first met:

Gang Bang
Shared, Dionysiac Lucy’s shivering
Still hot, but we relax awhile and smoke,
Jack on her left tit, I on her right, discussing
Spengler whom I haven’t read, or joke
of the Arabian children of delight—
Aware that Nature knows no cognate lovers,
Till Lucy coyly giggles in the night
And tells us how she teased her older brothers,
simpering sweetly. After which I rise,
caress her placid face, which is still damp
With joy, and from her head unscrew her eyes
Like bulbs out of the sockets of a lamp.

Kerouac and Ginsberg stun us with their frankness, bewitching us with an all-seeing eye, a revelatory time travel illuminating sudden spectacles of intelligence, wit and uttervulnerability. When Ginsberg writes a letter on October 14, 1948, he has already passed through the Blakean fire that possessed him the previous summer. One day while reading Blake, Ginsberg was jerking off, came, and felt at that very moment Blake’s cosmic cry summoning a clarion call, a WAKE UP bringing the beat bard out of his self-professed doldrums and back to his senses. By the end of the year he is ready to take the hand he is dealt and comprehend from the incomprehensible that which will allow him to conjure from chaos a new world of creation. He writes to Kerouac, perhaps the very words that will dig the moat around the castle of their beat sensibilities, “All the fascination and beauty of people meeting and echoing comes from our innate instinct which is not yet emerged to consciousness, that we are here . . .”

Love flickers, a tenderness vacillating like a flicker on a screen, deeper than mere want of flesh and blood, for Kerouac to Ginsberg is now no longer an object of lust, he is a comrade-in-arms ready to take up the battle as life-changing artists.It is late 1948, and Kerouac is deep into the throes of polishing a novel. He has already been wandering the feverish road in a marijuana haze, he conjures anew his memories of being lost with Cassady in deep mystery swamps, or deserted by Cassady when he is sick in the hallucinogenic Mexican deserts. Swarming visions of dark endless highways can easily become the back drop, he just needs to people them with characters. There are loves, lost loves, and of those left behind to someday come back and pick up where he left off. There is also the sensual mystery of a beautiful Latina girl. Though the “Mexican Girl” know as Bea Franco of On the Road) writes Kerouac back (for she has it in her head that he will one day come back for her), she becomes fictional fodder, the veritable Fellaheen Bonita of the American West). Though he uses the letters of others to give his novel veracity, he does avoid resurrecting ties with Franco. She writes him on October 25, 1947. I include a letter here, to illustrate the power of letters to change history and bring perspective to a past we think we know all too well. She isn’t the Mexican girl with the broken English Kerouac gives her in On the Road, she is literate, sweet and misled:

My dearest Loveing Jackie:
(one in a million)

Hope, that when you get this letter in your sweet, little hands, you will have arrived safely home.
I bet your mom, will be there waiting at the door with her arms, ready to welcome you back. Haw! I wish I were there also, next to her.

I missed you, even before you said good by. you see I’ve never met anyone- as sweet an unspoiled before in my life.

Jackie you know that if it weren’t for little albert I would have gone with you even if it were Hitchhiking. You say its pretty hard, but, even then, I would have gone, willingly. Well, I’ll work very hard starting Monday. And I will save as much money as I can, then I will be able to come to see you, and your lovely mother, for Christmas I will bring you both a little gift. I hope you have that little Xmass tree, by the window, waiting. Jackie, I bet you’ll be glad to see the frigadaire you’re mom had for you. Think! What all the things you can do with it. Ice Cream any time you want.

Jackie I’m going to start picking Oct. 26, Sunday, that’s tomorrow morning at 10. And I promise you, that I will save all the Monday I can. Because I really want to spend the Holidays in new york. I’ll close this letter now hoping to hear from you soon- give my regards to your mom. Although I don’t know her, I think she’s tops (I guess most mothers are)

With love and best wishes
remain as ever Bea Franco
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

She has no more of a chance of ever meeting Kerouac’s mother as does Mardou Fox, the African-American female protagonist of The Subterraneans. Gabrielle Kerouac, the God-fearing xenophobe, has no good use for Mexicans or Blacks, or Jews for that matter, as Ginsberg will come to know all too well. Kerouac keeps his girls city side, tucked safely away from where he lives with his mother.

When he locks into focus at Ozone Park, he attempts testy forays of his road novel through the keys of his typewriter or urgently spills words at the end of his pencil. Kerouac, like Ginsberg, knows time. He is impatient waiting to hear from Little, Brown, and from Atlantic Monthly, both recepients of chunks of his manuscript in the making. While he waits, Kerouac forges ahead surfing a tidal wave of concentrated prose. By the end of the day he tallies his accumulated word count: Nov. 19 – 1500 words, Nov. 20 – 2500 words, Nov. 21- 1000 words. By the 23rd, Kerouac drops completely out of the tired progression of The Town and the City and picks up his gestating road novel. He sorts through Allen’s letters for ideas, inspiration or for veracity of detail. Like that day Kerouac attended a class at the New School for Social Research with Ginsberg and listens to Alfred Kazin lecture on Melville’s Redburn. Afterwards they share a beer with the celebrated American critic. Kazin splits and one beer becomes ten for Jack, and, later that night, Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, the archangel of doom according to Kerouac, carries “sick drunk” Jean-Louis to the backseat of Lucien’s car where he passes out, wakes up and staggers home the next morning.

Two days letter, the pattern is set and Kerouac’s mood begins to blackens. “Everything is just it,” he will resign himself to in his journal. IT. The word becomes the shortest mantra ever writ in On the Road. For Kerouac, feebly grappling with a mood darkened to despair, he now matches the equally lovelorn and left-for-ruin Ginsberg who misses and still wants Neal Cassady, despite knowing that he is jumping between at least two women back west, and there is no room for a nerdy Jewish homosexual poet in his life. Not in that sense. There is no alternative but to lie down and wait to die, or, to one up death and court it one novel (or one poem) at a time. In September 1948, Ginsberg turns down Cassady’s offer, whether he meant it or not, of a life stipend. Ginsberg writes to Cassady: “If fate goes against me I will accept it gratefully and look on you as an angel from the Cosmos. But I think I must be my own angel if I am ever going to bring messages from heaven myself, and I will conquer or—Conquest at the moment is a matter of steeling myself to adjust to society.”

Ginsberg fancies himself a lone wolf, but by December 1948 he has Herbert Hunke stinking up his apartment. His homeless feet have been washed and his starving gullet fed hot soup as he is tenderly succored by Allen’s Prince Myshkin sensibilities. “Huncke moved in,” he informs Kerouac, “yakked at me irritably for a week and a half, ate my food, took my last nickel, and walked off with my last suits, a jacket, Russell Durgin’s winter clothes.” Hunke needs a nurse, or a sucker, Ginsberg acknowledges, imploring Kerouac not to “think ill of me.” Shortly thereafter, Ginsberg returns to Paterson, New Jersey, away from sickly Huncke, from the madness of Manhattan’s demon metropolis, to escape a crazy-making vortex of Benzedrine destruction and mental bewilderment. He writes Kerouac that his “consciousness interposes itself between my soul and the world.” Between each polestar, he can barely detect the faint heartbeat of his natal poetry.

Sometimes they are like two brothers separated by wives, by children, by circumstances beyond their control. Then the letters arrive, either as intercontinental shouts of encouragement, or requests for money (borrowed or owed), or to try out their new material, test runs of new stretches of prose, or stanzas leaping from Ginsberg’s mental coil. Kerouac dispenses advice to Ginsberg about meeting his editor, Robert Giroux, who is considering publishing Ginsberg’s poetry: “Be smart, now, and don’t shit your pants. The world is only waiting for you to pitch sad silent love in the place of excrement. Okay?” Ginsberg fires back with a love letter to Kerouac’s talent: “You really have hit a whole lode of originality of method of writing prose—method incidentally though like Joyce is your own origin and make and style, similarities only superficial your neologisms are not foggy philosophical precisions but aural (hear-able) inventions that carry meanings.” Kerouac and Ginsberg are cosmic twins borne out of Whitman’s Universal skull, bonded as comrades, joined-at-the-cerebellum as poets — a connection that will sour Kerouac when Ginsberg uses his poetic voice as a political soapbox in the 1960s.

When Kerouac rails against America in September 1954, (“All I’m saying is that the U.S. is in the hands of people like the publishers you hate and they are fucking us up in the rest of the world’s Spenglerian schemes. We should be feeding Asia not fighting her at this point.”), we know the source of his anger and frustration. Irate Kerouac still hasn’t published his road novel, yet refuses to sell out in a nation of burgeoning sell-outs. We also see ten years before the fact, Kerouac’s souring attitude toward the quagmire of Vietnam. His pacifist stance and a grounded realization that the world is in need of tender compassion, and less blood crusades is all he preaches. Kerouac’s futility is heartbreaking, because we have learned that his only way of coping with it, when the demons of his creative impulse didn’t suffice, was to squash it like Falstaff in a daily Bacchanalian drinkfest, along with the occasional tab of acid and a sundry assortment of uppers and downers.

The term ‘beat’ was first coined by Kerouac in a letter to Ginsberg in August 1957, during a disastrous trip to Mexico City where he fell ill and experienced a severe earthquake that he thought truly was the “natural end of the world.” He declared that Beat is “the Second Religiousness of Western Civilization.” Kerouac aligns his beliefs with Biblical intensities and an abiding belief that the Western world will soon turn its stone ears to the music of the East. Buddhism comes and goes for Kerouac, and for Ginsberg, who at first scoffs at Kerouac’s immersion in the Sutras, later will adopt Buddhism as his chief spiritual aim until the day when Buddhist monks are chanting over his dead body in his brand-new New York City loft.

By November 1957, everything they ever built up to and presumably prepared for is, to Kerouac, a dead bust. His cherished privacy for sidewalk brooding and road diner sketching is a thing of the past and the hot sting of the spotlights follow him like prison spotlights. Fame, he finds, has no perks. The celebrities he hoped to collaborate with, ignore him (Brando and Sinatra are two that ignored his letters). It is to Allen Ginsberg he aims the hollow-point ammo of his recondite ponderings:

“Allen, you know why I said I was the greatest American poet and you greatest Israeli poet? Because you didn’t pick up on Americana till you read Visions of Neal, before that you were big Burroughsian putter-downer of Americana. […] You suddenly saw Americana of Neal and all, and picked up on it, and made a killing on it, but your heart’s in the mountains, O Tribe of the Mountains, the Mountains of Judea! Am I not right? You KNOW I’M RIGHT!”

Meanwhile, back at the Eternal Now, we have this, and a great book it remains, hurling us into the wilderness of creation, each writer is fully fleshed out as individuals bent on creating art and forging a new path into the wilderness of American letters. That they acknowledged the raw, primitive beauty of America is a vital element toward comprehending that “holy new feeling out there in the streets.” Their passions continue to burn unabated; flickering fires of creation rightly inspiring, influencing and placating generations young and old to take it to the streets.

[Amber Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of 465 pages, it only took five words in this volume to transform and clarify my perspective on the Beat Generation.

It was summer 2010 when I began reading Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters; sometime that August – shortly before a new academic year cut off my pleasure reading – I came to five words that stopped and held onto me, trance-like: "All green. Abandon everything else." This is the culmination of a 1948 letter to Jack Kerouac from Allen Ginsberg. At this point, neither has been 'discovered' or published. They write back and forth across the country, typically in a philosophical vein, and recently they've been using the colour green as a metaphor for love. Humour me as I provide a little more context from the authors:

Kerouac: … it's just a kind of fear of being understood, or misunderstood, with love as the basic energy – for to be understood completely implies a kind of vacuum. Realize, Allen, that if all the world were green there would be no such thing as the colour green. Similarly , men cannot know what it is to be together without otherwise knowing what it is to be apart. If all the world were love, then, how could love exist?

Allen: This is the root of your dishonesty and in a similar way mine. You try to keep it back. […] That is what the phrase "God is Love" means. There is one law and most men try to live as if their law were different, as if they had an understanding of their own. […] This is the abyss. Everything is green, love, without the logical fantastic equivocations that we invent so that we won't actually have to face each other. […] I was frightened as a kid by the transfiguration scene in Jekyll and Hyde. That is because it recalled my true self to me. So miraculous and unbelievable is this true self, is life, that it seems like an image of horror, once we accept that horror we see that it was all a fit, that horror was the birth pains, the pangs of recognition of self deception, and we are in love (in green).

~ ~ ~
(I am reminded of cummings: "because my father lived his soul / love is the whole and more than all.")

This is one of the many glimmering passages in The Letters where the yearning, to understand themselves and the world and God, burns through the self-righteous incoherence to which the Beat Generation is too often reduced. When twenty-two-year-old Ginsberg tells Kerouac that only human, brotherly love truly exists (the New Age today refer to it as ubuntu), that it is "all green" and to "abandon everything else" – that, to me, is a more important observation about the Beats than that they drank or took peyotl or were roped into the racist and sexist prejudices of their non-Beat peers.

Now, I have to add, make no mistake: the Letters also depicts an abnormal share of drug use, alcoholism, womanizing/misogyny, and general hedonism – that which we expect from honest accounts of American bohemian life in the Fifties and Sixties. There is also a lot of semi-boring talk about publication and (mostly) the struggle to get their work into it. Plus a continuous trickle of friend or frenemy-oriented gossip that immerses you in Allen and Jack's social circles. Said circles were, individually and collectively, pretty messed up. All these things don't preclude this generation from being one of extraordinary seekers: highly ambitious in their own right, hopelessly angry but in search of peace, rebelling against everything because they're looking for something, anything – eschewing the rules of their parents' God and yet deeply spiritual, in fact more spiritual than almost any other quality. I think the above excerpts dignify that spirituality.

This is a bit of a weird review for me to write, and I'm sure for you to read. From a conventional viewpoint the "literary merit" of Beat writing seems obscured or non-existant, but I am neither coming from a conventional viewpoint nor do I want to dictate to anyone what's valuable in literature. I am trying to explain what I get about their writing and why I love what I get. The people we call the Beats are living dead-center of the craziest hundred years in our history, and they react like anybody can be expected to react who perceives (rightly) that the world is changing too quickly to make sense. "Beat" is strange to us, often ugly (racism and sexism DID abound in all circles, not just the counterculture); it's perhaps incomprehensible. If you haven't already been exposed to at least some writings from the Beat Generation, these letters are likely to disgust or at least confuse you. But even more critically, I feel – if you don't understand on some level what "beat" really means in this context, what it is to be beat, there's nothing I'll be able to say to show you. Reading Kerouac and Ginsberg's correspondence might help. I know that after finally picking it up again and reading it straight through this time, I understand it more fully. In their letters, left unedited as their novels and poetry couldn't be, is a reflection of the tired, tireless, ravenous Beat human-animal nakedness. These two men and their self-expression each to the other upend the Eliot-esque intention to mask the writer behind the words. The total, seem-it-good-or-bad honesty is what creates the beatific. With the blinding honesty of the Letters, I know I've found the seeds of wisdom I always felt to be under the 'madness,' the breath sustaining the song.

Afterword: On the same August afternoon two years ago, I also knew that I wanted to carry Ginsberg's words with me forever. It took nearly two years to prove my intention. A few weeks ago, at last, I had my first tattoo – I am inked like a manuscript, vibrant with green typewriter-font letters, in love with my skin: all green. abandon everything else.

[Aleksandar Šegrt · Rating 4 out of 5]

izuzev dvetri pročitane knjige, nisam baš mnogo znao o pripadnicima bit generacije; utisak je ne previše impresivni ljudi, još manje umetnici (ne osporavajući doprinos globalnoj liberalizaciji), ali živeli su do jaja!
pisma zanimljiva, svakako vredi pročitati.

[Frederic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary...while I've never been a big fan of the work of Kerouac(except for "The Dharma Bums"with the lovely portrait of Gary Snyder as Japhy Ryder)or Ginsberg(except for "Howl","Kaddish" and "Father Death Blues")their lives,by way of the wonderful Ann Charters "Kerouac" or "Dharma Lion" by Michael Schumaker,seem to me endlessly facinating and this collection of letters is a testimony to the Youth,Ambition,and Sheer Mad Enthusiasm of their (not so small)Circle of Friends in the '40's and '50's....the letters also give the Lie to the Conventional Wisdom that Fame "ruined" Kerouac...upon publication of "On the Road", his innate, kindhearted generosity was given full expression,for a while at least...and the cruel Jew-Hatred and far-ranging misanthropy that blighted his last years was exacerbated by his alchoholism and,of course,by Memere rather than simply by "SUCCESS"...in contrast to Ginsberg,who by all accounts(in addition to his loving responses to abuse from Kerouac)was a loving,loyal and supportive friend throughout their lives...both men wildly overestimated their respective literary worth(comparisons to Shakespeare,Joyce,Cerrvantes,et.al.are cringe-inducing at times) but both were,and continue to be,important Literary/Cultural/Religious Avatars whose influence continues to be felt....an important,exciting,Fun addition to the literature by and about The Beats...

[Romina Flauers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kerouac es uno de mis heroes personales, he leído bastantes de sus novelas porque disfruto muchísimo su estilo autobiográfico, así que el poder leer algo tan personal y cotidiano como su correspondencia fue un gran ejercicio.

Lo que más disfrute de este compendio de cartas fue el poder humanizar a ambos autores, ponerlos a mi mismo nivel y darme cuenta que eran personas comunes y corrientes, se reían, tenían malos días, se peleaban entre ellos, hacían berrinches, etcétera.

Fue muy interesante el ver cómo cada uno de los autores iba forjando su propio estilo y su propio camino con el paso de los años, ver cómo empiezan emulando a sus héroes y terminan por encontrar su propio camino, hasta volverse los grandes personajes que fueron.

[Ugur Tezcan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Il y a beaucoup de charabias boudhistes (désolé pour l'expression ce n'est pas le bouddhisme qui est ridicule mais la manière dont ces auteurs l'abordent) et le récit des relations entre des personnes qu'on connaît pas spécialement, à moins d'être spécialiste de la littérature beat. C'est un livre pour les fans et ceux qui ne sont pas des connaisseurs mais qui veulent comprendre le supposé message de la génération beat devraient consulter l'Internet et Perso je ne crois pas qu'il y en a un. Beat generation se compose des auteurs qui ont des visions du monde assez différentes les uns des autres et c'est surtout des débats portant sur ces différentes visions du monde qu'il s'agit dans ce livre. Toutefois, ils sont quasiment incompréhensibles car ces lettres ont sans doute étaient écrites sous l'effet de l'alcool et des drogues!

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Complaint of the Skeleton to Time
1.
Take my love, it is not true,
So let it tempt no body new;
Take my Lady, she will sigh
For my bed where'er I lie;
Take them said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
2.
Take my raiment, now grown cold
To sell to some poor poet old;
Give the dirt that hoods this truth,
If his age would wear my youth;
Take them said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
3.
Take the thoughts that like the wind
Blew my body out of mind;
Take the ghost that comes at night
To steal away my heart's delight;
Take them said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
4.
Take this spirit, it's not mine,
I stole it somewhere down the line,
Take this flesh to go with that
And pass it on from rat to rat;
Take them said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.
5.
Take this voice, which I bemoan,
And take this penance to atone,
Grind me down, tho' I may groan
To the starkest stick and stone;
Take them said the skeleton,
But leave my bones alone.


This is a complaint of praise to destroying time. I am not sure whether the bones represent the core of self which is the last to be given up; or whether I'm telling everybody they can do what they want as long as they leave the god-bone alone.

...
Do you think I am right or wrong, sane/crazy?
Allen

[Joseph · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of letters certainly won't help dispel the notion that there's a thin line between genius and madness. Both of these writers are among the most influential of the latter 20th Century, and both clearly led very dysfunctional lives. Probably an important study for modern lit scholars, but a tough slog for the casual reader.

[Beth Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this because I was a little (ok, a lot) in love with Jack Kerouac, and a marginal fan of Ginsberg. By the end, I am more in love with Allen and less impressed with Jack. But this is a great read for any Beat fan. Just be forewarned: Jack Kerouac was kind of an asshole.

[رؤيا شعبان · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was the longest read ever . the last part is the hardest to read , i was scared that once am finishing this book , my life will be over . but yet am still Alive .

و هذه الترجمة السريعة لرسالتي المفضلة في الكتاب

http://royareload.blogspot.com/2015/1...

[Aslihan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting read for many reasons, but mainly because the letters are very personal and intimate and although written by major literary figures, they are not written to be published. There is a different element of naivety and authenticity embedded in these letters, the struggles for getting published, constant lack of money, all personal ups and downs, the love/hate relationships among the members of the Beat circle. The letters provide a valuable insight into the building of the Beat generation, especially when read in parallel to the works of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs and the others. The Beats represent a unique subculture in the postwar American setting, deeply questioning the mainstream ideas and values of the society they live in. The letters as well as the Beat literature are rather weak in terms of the political critique, but they are vivid in the way they challenge social norms and move beyond the socially acceptable life styles. The emphasis on Buddhism reflects upon the search for an alternative meaning of life, a different, visionary existential worldview that transcends the binaries of material and spiritual, now and forever, earthly and otherworldly.

[aida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book took me a long time to finish, everytime I picked it up again, I wondered why I haven't read it for so long. I didn't understand many expressions, but that didn't spoil my experience. Very enjoyable and interesting read. Made me want to be in NYC in 40's and 50's, an anonymous part of their group, dealing with publishers, traveling with them, breathing the same air as them, talking about literature. And they made me think about lots of things, about past, present and feature, made me ponder, made me feel a lot of feelings. Buddha mentions, I love those. I got to know them a little bit more, fall in love with Jack a little bit more.
Mad. Hip. Love everywhere.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The literary merit and detail in these letters are extraordinary. Reading the entire collection was like getting to hear Ginsberg and Kerouac write their own 500 page biography of their travels and the Beat generation. Sad to watch Kerouac withdraw from the world after he achieved fame, but i'm glad he and Ginsberg remained such close, loyal friends despite long periods of traveling the world away from each other. Even when they were in Mexico, Japan, or Italy they managed to stay in touch and document in meticulous detail all of their writing projects, and express their love for each other across the miles.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

All green. Abandon everything else.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book. There was lots of good content in it. My favorite moments were the simple life philosophy stuff they worked through together. They were both such incredible and talented minds. I loved the passage where Kerouac fiercely defended his novel. He had such a belief in himself that often crossed the line into arrogance, but I don't really care about that. I'm done writing this review, bad idea to write a review on a cell phone.

[Cherie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Absolutely brilliant. Wonderful collection of letters - you see the beautiful poetry that pours from both of these Beat writers, even in a regular letter. Also great to see the progression of their friendship over the years, as well as the deterioration of Kerouac. Wonderful. A must for any Kerouac or Ginsberg fan.

[Bart Kawiorski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powiem tak, 700 stron i cały czas wciąga... Jeśli ktoś lubi czytać listy. Te czyta się jak powieść drogi (sam nie wiem czemu ;)). Aż się chce poznać/wrócić* do jego twórczości. A poza tym fantastycznie przetłumaczone listy.
*niepotrzebne skreślić

[Klaudia Raczek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tę książkę czytałam ponad dwa lata. Co jakiś czas chwytałam za nią i wystarczało mi uwagi i odwagi na zaledwie kilka listów na jedno posiedzenie. Była to lektura powolna, czasem nużąca, często zaskakująca, wciągająca.

Była to lektura chaotyczna i kompulsywna, taka, jak wszystkie nieprzewidywalne listy między Jackiem Kerouakiem i Allenem Gisbergiem.

O CZYM PISZĄ W LISTACH KEROUAC I GINSBERG?

listy
O trudnościach z wydawaniem m.in. W drodze, o początkowych porażkach wydawniczych i nagłym sukcesie; o zalążkach i koncepcjach innych książek, kontaktach z wydawcami, pisarzami.

O chorobach psychicznych, uzależnieniu od alkoholu i narkotyków, problemach z tożsamością i orientacją seksualną, prozie życia, poezji śmierci.

O stałych i przemijających fascynacjach literackich, filozofii, buddyzmie, samotności, tułaczce nie tylko po całych Stanach Zjednoczonych, ale i świecie.

O ciągłych problemach z pracą, pieniędzmi, mieszkaniem, jedzeniem.

O rzeczywistości tak zupełnie różnej od europejskiej, do tego oddalonej w czasie o ponad pięćdziesiąt lat.

KOGO NIE ZAWIEDZIE LEKTURA LISTÓW DWÓCH NAJWAŻNIEJSZYCH BEATNIKÓW?

Te listy najbardziej ucieszą obecnych lub ongisiejszych fanów beatników, wielbicieli awangardy literackiej, kultury Stanów Zjednoczonych, zainteresowanych połową XX wieku, a przede wszystkim tych, którzy mają w sobie dużo cierpliwości i wytrwałości, aby przebrnąć przez ponad 700 stron zapisanych drobną czcionką.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fascinated by these letters. Written back and forth by writers of equal talent and mutual affection and respect, they didn't hesitate to express a few "I hate you's" followed by either time off or any easy acceptance. That all these letters were saved amazes me, and I'm so glad that Ginsberg and Kerouac managed that. I think they both saw letters as a way of exercising as writers as well as connecting to someone they cared about deeply.

As they grew older, Ginsberg, the extrovert, continued his path of keeping up with art and music; he even appears nude in Edie Sedgewick's last film. Keroauc, ever the introvert, instead adopts Buddhist principles and is influenced to spend more time in nature. His hiking, climbing, and solitary roaming connect him to the natural world and his growing spirituality. The letters that flew between them become more infrequent, and they are barely in touch when Kerouac dies. It's sad to see this between friends, yet each was only remaining true to himself, their differences sending them on different journeys.

[Shell Avenant · Rating 1 out of 5]

My parents bought me this book as a graduation present because they knew I loved Ginberg’s Howl, and wrote lovely notes on the inside cover for me, and I will always treasure my copy of the book as a lovingly-intentioned gift from my wonderful parents.

However, this book itself was a real eye-opener about what an irritating hack Kerouac was, and even Ginsberg too, to a lesser extent.

I don’t know how these two got a reputation for being so deep, because these letters essentially chronicle a couple of self-obsessed manchildren revelling in their privilege, objectifying other people (Kerouac even details a rape he committed by sleeping with a woman who was so drunk he described it as like sleeping with a corpse), and saying nothing compelling at all along the way. Reading this felt like getting trapped in a corner at a party by some slobbery drunk dude who dropped an obscure hallucinogenic on his gap year and now wants to explain the world to you.

[Marshall Borrus · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me four attempts across four years to finish this book, but I did.

Long long book where you feel its length. Some incredibly beautiful prose, lots of semi indecipherable ramblings, and even more publishing logistics. Still, through it all, between the words, shines a decades long friendship of love, struggle, worship, trust, and admiration, like nothing I've read before.

For that reason, it's worth the slog through the buddhist mid-book ramblings to come out the other side; fame, fortune, fear, demise, decay.

Many letters are about a wish to leave, fewer letters about found happiness, but both do exist.

"Would there were no worm to mar my happiness. I’m free and don’t suffer anymore, in fact never did"

[Joaquín Aracena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solo para fanáticos de la generación beat y, especificamente, de Kerouac y Ginsberg. Un recopilación de cartas en donde se ve su evolución como escritores, los desafíos del mundo literario, la historia de los beats de primera fuente, y todas sus inquietudes espirituales.

Se vuelve muy denso en varios momentos, pero es entendible porque son cartas. No están hechas con una narrativa o ritmo, fueron escritos para dejar de manifiesto los delirios y desvaríos de dos escritores que no eran apegados ni a la métrica ni a las concepciones sociales clásicas. Kerouac y Ginsberg fueron personas que estuvieron en una búsqueda constante del significado de la vida, intentando sobrevivir en un mundo que no estaba listo para ellos.

[Amanda Marsico · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm calling it. I so wanted to like this because I love Ginsberg and Kerouac, but these letters are sometimes so cerebral (or drug/alcohol-induced, I don't know) that I just can't get through them. It's too long of a book to press on not liking it. Disappointed.

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Especially when you love their writing, it's often painful to be confronted with authors' private thoughts/admissions among themselves, even if you guessed long ago how they treated/thought about other human beings (whether individuals or groups).

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two brilliant friends growing up together writing as honestly as two people can write and then growing apart but still all love. This was beautiful insight into two people who helped each other live uncompromising honest lives. Inspiring.

[aga]

I enjoyed reading this when I was on my beat lit kick in high school. Back then I got 40% in. I don't think I'm going to pick this up again though, so I'm marking this as dnf.

[Jacqueline]

“𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚘𝚘 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑, 𝙸’𝚖 𝚝𝚛𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚞𝚗 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚢 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚝 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚕 𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚜𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚐”.

[Rocío · Rating 3 out of 5]

La gente esta siendo investigada y detenida pero mandándose cartas públicamente diciendo "tengo kilogramos de cocaína en mi casa y he matado a mi mujer"

[Michel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has become sort of a bible to me. Whenever I don't know what to read, I pick this book from my shelf. Every letter is a new adventure. I love this bromance more than any other.