Starred review from May 17, 2010
At times loving, at others blistering, sarcastic, often uncomfortably self-lacerating and intimate, these 200 letters, collected in a heroic editorial effort by Ginsberg biographer Morgan and independent editor Stanford, cover the years 1944–1963, the most fertile in the creative lives of Kerouac and Ginsberg. A disbelieving Ginsberg writes to Kerouac in 1952 that On the Road is unpublishable, while Kerouac asks Ginsberg to treat his magnum opus as the next Ulysses. Kerouac immediately praises Howl in 1955, and in return Ginsberg gives Kerouac the manuscript while recounting, like any hopeful author, how freebies have gone to Eliot, Pound, Faulkner. Throughout, the sometimes sporadic letter writing is filled with fragments of works in progress and pungent observations on the authors and publishing people who influenced them, from Dante and Gide to Malcolm Cowley and Sterling Lord. There also is plenty of gossip about Peter Orlovsky, William Burroughs, and others in the circle. A growing rift concludes the 1950s, as literary fame mixed with alcohol weighs on Kerouac, though these soul brothers reunite through letters of the early 1960s. On receiving Ginsberg’s work, Thelonius Monk exclaimed, "It makes sense." In its strange way, so does this intense and offbeat correspondence.
June 15, 2010
It seems fitting, somehow, that the correspondence of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, literary rebels and scourges of convention, should begin with a prison postmark.
The two got to know each other in 1944, and their first letter, Ginsberg to Kerouac, came in mid-August of that year, when Kerouac was cooling his heels in the Bronx County Jail for his small part in a sordid murder. That case is well documented in biographies of both Kerouac and Ginsberg, of which Ann Charters's Kerouac (1994) and Bill Morgan's I Celebrate Myself (2006), respectively, are essential. The letter is hitherto not well known, however, and it reveals no remorse on the part of the 18-year-old Ginsberg, who was also tangled up in the business, and the 22-year-old Kerouac. Instead, Ginsberg wrestles a novice's apercu out of the fact that the victim's apartment had been freshly redecorated: "The snows of yesteryear seem to have been covered by equally white paint." For his part, newly married even while behind bars, Kerouac replies of Carr, "Hating himself as he does, hating his 'human-kindness,' he seeks new vision, a post-human post-intelligence."
Whitman meets Nietzsche, with some Keats and Dostoyevsky thrown in for good measure. But both Kerouac and Ginsberg would soon be on to something else—Apollo wrestling with Dionysus. Their letters multiplied, hundreds of them now collected in Bill Morgan and David Stanford's new anthology Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters, letters that skip over oceans and continents—but also travel only a hop, from Ozone Park to Sheepshead Bay, say, on the rare occasions when the two were in the same town at the same time.
Whatever the provenance or destination, the letters are full of enthusiasms: for books read, for people met, for impulses satisfied or soon to be satisfied. Kerouac is pleased because a child watching him work is "amazed because I type so fast." Ginsberg is pleased because "I Allen Ginsberg one and only, have just finished cutting down my book from 89 poems to a mere perfect 42."
But then there are the professional jealousies, the squabbles and the gossip. Kerouac rails because others are being published. "Can you even tell me for instance...why they publish [John Clellon] Holmes's book [Go] which stinks and don't publish mine because it's not as good as some of the other things I've done?" he demands. (This is in 1952, some years before his ship is definitively to come in.) Ginsberg replies, unhelpfully, that he thinks Doctor Sax is better than On the Road, as perhaps it was, given that On the Road was much different from the version we now know.
The collection shows two writers on the ascent, hungry, seeking fame and, at times, even the endorsement of the establishment. (Ginsberg sends T.S. Eliot a copy of Howl, seeking a blurb.) It tracks them as they achieve notoriety, then fame, and it hints at fissures that will soon open—chronicled, one hopes, in Volume 2, since this group of letters ends in 1963, before the Dionysian moment fully kicks in. (It's there, though. Ginsberg to Kerouac: "Got high on junk last night and thought of you.") Stay tuned as the long, strange trip unfolds.
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
Starred review from June 1, 2010
Kerouac and Ginsberg first met on Columbia University's campus in 1943, both tyro authors drawn to each other by a love of literature. This remarkable collection of letterstwo-thirds of which are published here for the first timedocuments their friendship through 1963, six years before Kerouac's untimely death. Open-hearted and richly detailed, the letters discuss the authors' personal lives and loves, their investigations into Buddhism, their ongoing creative projects, and their struggle to find outlets for their works leading up to the publication of Ginsberg's "Howl and Other Poems" in 1956 and Kerouac's "On The Road" in 1957. Rich in news about fellow Beat writers, including John Clellon Holmes, William Burroughs, and Gregory Corso, among others, their correspondence provides a bird's-eye view of what went into the making and marketing of the Beat Generation. VERDICT The publication of these letters between two of America's leading 20th-century authors is an extraordinary event in American literature, particularly welcome in this era of chat and Twitter.William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2010
In August 1944, Allen Ginsberg sends a letter to his close friend Jack Kerouac in care of the Bronx County Jail, where hes incarcerated as a material witness in a murder case. So begins a profound 20-year correspondence about books, spiritual quests, sex, love, and the struggle for recognition. Morgan, author of The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation (2010), and editor Stanford showcase 200 high-voltage letters, most never before published, that embody the energy and psychic hunger that fueled the creativity of these giants of American literature. Ginsberg and Kerouac frolic and dive in the ocean of language, trading urgent confessions, bracing criticism, and mutual inspiration, using their passionate missives as proving grounds for their radical writing, core beliefs, and personal dilemmas. Here are intense inquiries into art, truth, and Buddhism; wild tales of narcotics, world travels, and their brother Beats, especially William Burroughs and Neal Cassady; and fresh insights into such seminal works as Ginsbergs Howl and Kerouacs On the Road. This incandescent collection deepens our understanding of an essential literary revolution.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)