Trip Trap

by Jack Kerouac, Albert Saijo, Lew Welch

On a rainy night in San Francisco, just before Thanksgiving in 1959, Jack Keroauc, Lew Welch, and Albert Saijo piled into Welch's car and set off on a cross-country trip, headed for New York City and then on to Keroauc's mother's home on Long Island. Trip Trap is a record of that journey, notes from the road by three of the central figures of the Beat Movement as they shared booze and coffee and peanut butter sandwiches, talking and singing and versifying while the country slipped by out the window. Here are the haiku that Keroauc, Saijo, and Welch jotted down in notebooks, along with a recollection of the trip written by Saijo in 1973, a section from Welch's unfinished novel that describes the trip and the return, and Welch's early 1960 letters to Keroauc that continue the bond forged during those days on the road together. Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was a principal actor in the Beat Generation, a companion of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in that great adventure. His books include On the Road , The Dharma Bums , Mexico City Blues , Lonesome Traveler , Visions of Cody , Pomes All Sizes (City Lights), Scattered Poems (City Lights), and Scripture of the Golden Eternity (City Lights). Lew Welch (1926-1971?) was an American poet and active participant in the Beat generation literary movement. From 1965 to 1970, he taught a poetry workshop. His works, which were published by City Lights/Grey Fox, include Trip Haiku on the Road , Selected Poems , and Ring of Bone . Albert Saijo (1929-2011) was a Japanese-American poet and active participant in the Beat Generation literary movement. He and his family were imprisoned, along with many other Japanese-American families, as part of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. During this time he wrote about his internment experience for his high school newspaper. After joining the US Army and studying at University of Southern California, he became friends with Jack Keroauc and other influential Beat Generation figures. His famous works include The Backpacker (1972) and A Rhapsody (1997). A collection of his works from the 80s and 90s, Woodrat Flat , was published posthumously in 2014.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Travel

69 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

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

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Willy and the hand shift. The road is long, the book is trim. Short and sweet, the generation Beat. The karma of the Dharma.

LEW
"Cadillacs are always in a hurry
Call it a watchpocket book
Look at these buildings
What are they DOING here
This arroyo & that sand
I last saw Amarillo
as a soldier
smoking my first cigar
& Roosevelt
died

Roosevelt
had a dirty asshole
so we had
Pearl Harbor
Hitler had a dirty ass
so we had Buchenwald
Senator McCarthy
had a dirty asshole
& he died
Not one cowboy
in Texas
has a clean asshole
But there is one
in Las Vegas
Alexander Pope
had a dirty asshole
T S Eliot prays for
the dirty asshole
T S Eliot's fog
had a dirty asshole
The last time I saw Paris
I had a dirty asshole
Pres Eisenhower
plays golf with a dirty asshole
No insult intended to
his partner"

There are several pages scribed over hundreds of miles on the trip across America

Even Santa Claus has a dirty asshole

[Evan Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

In many ways the book touches on Lew, Albert and K's ability to stay in touch with the little moments in life that is described in the epigraph: "yesterday I thought of something / I never had the chance to tell you / / remember?" I am particularly moved by the natural approach and feel each of these poems have - the Emersonian riffs Lew messes around with. As the "asshole" piece tells us, we are not to be concerned with that which is outside of our "skin" : " I am tired / of this talk of holes / For holes is where / my skin / is not" It's ones job to a). Not lose attention or b). Be concerned with that which we cannot experience in our "skin."
The letters between K and Lew are GORGEOUS! I cannot help but relate to a confused Lew when he asks for K's guidance and help is his own writing. I read K when I'm stuck and always (or at least today) K has "transmitted" much of the same knowledge the two shared. Money seemed to always be a struggle for Lew and his mother but I think it's important to notice that each letter is closed with a sincere notion wishing the best between the two companions and their families. More poets should read this book, and more books like this should be published.

[Andrew Mastin. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book that made me come around and give the beats another shot. I’d read Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ too early on I think, and too quickly, so I soon forgot about it— thinking that maybe I just didn’t “get” the beats. Then I read Jack’s “Book of Sketches” and it started clicking with me. Then I came to this book, which provided some context for the time. It afforded some beautiful insight into the three poets lives and psyches, which I found to be truly wonderful. I just wanna put a bag together and hit the road myself, now. I’ve gone back to Howl, started Mexico City Blues, and am looking to get my hands on more of the stuff.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It was short, to the point, and funny. They used alot of vulgar language, that's mainly what made it funny. The book was almost entirly haikus, and these haikus were halarious. As soon as I got to the bottom of page twenty four, I was very confused, but after a few more pages of the vulgarity and weird jargon, it became very funny. If Jack Kerouc's intention was to make people laugh with these haikus he was absolutely successful. If that was not his intention he did it any way.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads like three dudes being dudes in a car. Nothing big going on here. If these were submitted in a class, they would be disappointed at the reception.

But perhaps the point of all this wasn't to publish, but to more or less whet the knife, so to speak. Perhaps (undoubtedly) this is the result of some posthumous capitalism (RIP).

The value in this comes from Albert's intro and Lew's outro. Also just in getting that glimpse of the humanness that resides inside the celebrity.

Recommended for anyone in the backseat on a cross-country adventure.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three friends on the road
Searching for truth elusive
But no two see same
Accident

Haiku be the form
River flowing as wind blows
Trace thought flows from yellow page

(Okay... so its not a perfect Haiku, but neither is this work. It is alright. Strong observations flitter and randomly appear. Not the best, but definitely not the worst.)

[Mat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to give this a higher rating, I really did, but just couldn't.

And I'm an absolutely HUGE fan of Jack Kerouac's writing (especially his prose) and Lew Welch's as well. Perhaps I'm just getting older? Perhaps, I hate to admit, I've never had a real feel for most haiku? (although there have been some exceptions). These short poems pass themselves off as haiku. They are haiku-like in flavor but that's about it, in terms of orthodox haiku that is.
I know the Beats had a different concept which they called 'American haiku' and didn't believe in following the same syllable counts as the Japanese do (which makes sense considering how different English and Japanese are as languages) but still, how far should we take liberties with stuff like this......

What saves this book from being an absolute flop are the wonderful prose pieces by Albert Saijo (his introduction) and the two short prose pieces by Welch, especially Welch's letter to Kerouac that closes off the book.

As for the haiku, some of them were good, some of them were instantly forgettable, and some of them (especially the ones about dirty assholes) were quite amusing.

Not Beat poetry's finest hour though. Far from it. I wouldn't bother to pick up a copy of this unless you are a Kerouac completist (like me) or are suitably young to enjoy it. (I do think this kind of fare appeals to a younger audience so I would have enjoyed this more if I had read it 10-15 years ago).

[Alex Drogin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea of a “novel” written out in the form of letters to friends. It allows for a bit of direction still with room for embellishment and poetics and pretty words — I almost called it ‘tongue-work,’ but that feels too explicit for a public review. This book is not a novel written out in the form of letters to friends, though it includes two at the end. They contain the first instance I’ve seen of a haiku slipped into a letter directed for a friend:

“dark pines
white water
the sound is the same”

I like the idea a lot. I like the poetry, though I think “poetry” may be a bit generous for what is seen here. A better word may be “poetics.” I like poetics. Saijo seems like a creep.

[Fahim Rahman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good read.

[Ed Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me want to write poems. They were called the San Diego
Nonsense Poems when I visited San Diego in 1974. Joel Lewis my friend was writing his Edgewater Poems, manuscript lost in Mike Reardon's car along the Palisades.
Now Joel is great editor of Ted Berrigan's Interviews
see Talisman Press, journalist, mentor to younger
poets at the Poetry Project.
And we are still writing 30 years later.

[LewWelchThePoet · Rating 2 out of 5]

The strangely moving letters from Lew Welch were the best part of what was otherwise a throwaway kind of book.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick, upbeat documentation of a cross country roadtrip. Entertaining, but not quite essential to the Kerouac canon.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visceral, often hilarious, and thorough. Very interesting collection of experiments.