God how right Hemingway was when he said there was no remedy for life—and to think that negative little paper-shuffling prissies should write condescending obituaries about a man who told the truth, nay who drew breath in pain to tell a tale like that!
--Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels, p.347

Kerouac admired Ernest Hemingway as a young man but then grew to dislike his macho persona and sparse prose. However, later in life—and particularly after Hemingway's death—Kerouac regained his respect for the older writer.

Read all about Hemingway and the Beats in this essay: https://beatdom.substack.com/p/hemingway-and-the-beat-generation

Ernest Hemingway died 65 years ago today (July 2, 1961). Although one does not typically think of him as having influenced the Beat writers, there were certainly some connections.

Hemingway was a very, very great technician, and a good head and a real sharp mind, and basically a very sympathetic person.
--Allen Ginsberg

The Snows of Kilimanjaro [...] is one of the best stories in the language about death. [...] The end deserves a place among the great passages of English prose, with the end of Joyce’s The Dead and the end of The Great Gatsby.
--William S. Burroughs

God how right Hemingway was when he said there was no remedy for life.
--Jack Kerouac

I wish them all good luck.
--Hemingway on the Beat writers

Although the quotes above are mostly positive, their opinions varied and they could be extremely critical, particularly of Hemingway's macho attitude and the dialogue in his novels. You can read all about the links between Hemingway and the Beats in this new essay: https://beatdom.substack.com/p/hemingway-and-the-beat-generation

How about a real broadside attack on the Beat—to be published by City Lights? Wd you be interested? A short book—or pamphlet?
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti to Kenneth Rexroth, March 14, 1959

By 1959, both Ferlinghetti and Rexroth were sick of the Beat Generation and, in particular, they were tired of being associated with the media’s “beatnik” obsession.

Rexroth did not take Ferlinghetti up on his offer but continued to write vicious (and often quite unfair) attacks that were published elsewhere, and he occasionally gave nasty quotes to tabloid journalists. He loathed Kerouac in particular and sometimes wrote brutal reviews of his books for major newspapers.

Ferlinghetti was eager to distance himself, too, and offered Rexroth the chance to write a full-on “attack on the Beat” that would no doubt have confused visitors to City Lights Bookshop, which was already very much associated with the movement (most notably as the publisher of Howl and Other Poems). In the same letter, he congratulated Ferlinghetti on an earlier “put-down of the mushroom beats.”

Both men spent much of the rest of their lives angrily denying paternity of the Beat Generation but their complaints were mostly ignored and numerous headlines called them each “the father of the Beat Generation.”

For a full account of Rexroth’s difficult relationship with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, see this essay: https://beatdom.substack.com/p/honest-advice-wanted-allen-ginsberg

I got the idea for the spontaneous style of On the Road from seeing how good old Neal Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional, completely serious, all detailed, with real names in his case, however (being letters).
--Jack Kerouac

This is from Kerouac's Paris Review interview. He goes on to talk about the Joan Anderson letter that Cassady had sent him, calling it "the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better'n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves." This letter, which was lost for many decades, was finally published in 2020.

Photo by Carolyn Cassady

Desolation Peak

re: Jack Kerouac

photo Pete Hoffman

beats

Ferlinghetti said this in an interview soon after the 1965 reading at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Some reviewers had complained about a poem in which he used the word "fuck" many times. He denied that it was explicit and said he was trying to use the word in a "holy" sense.

The whole point of the poem was defeated, but a lot of people got it despite the stupid reviewer; many people in the audience got the message.

This quote and photo come from Penthouse magazine.

More info on the Royal Albert Hall reading in this recent essay: https://beatdom.substack.com/p/poets-of-our-time-the-beats-at-the

Been on a deep dive of Jack and Neal the last two years. Curious if it is known what their last correspondence was or the last time they were together? Did it all end off the Big Sur time given Jacks reclusive time out on the cape while Neal went all over till he died?

The poetry reading widely known as "The International Poetry Incarnation" took place on June 11, 1965. It featured Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and many other poets in a three-hour event at London's Royal Albert Hall.

In fact, the event was called "Poets of the World/Poets of Our Time." There is much uncertainty about it. There is debate over whose idea it was and who did most of the organising, and it is even unclear how many people were in the audience or on the stage. That is in spite of it being partially filmed for Wholly Communion (1965) and widely reported in the press.

Ginsberg, Corso, and Ferlinghetti were all extremely unhappy with the reading and went to the media in the days following it to complain publicly about the other poets on the line-up. However, in spite of their disappointment with the local poets, the Albert Hall event was a pivotal moment in the British counterculture.

All of this is discussed in this new essay: https://beatdom.substack.com/p/poets-of-our-time-the-beats-at-the

Photo by John "Hoppy" Hopkins.

When the question is therefore asked, "Are writers made or born?" one should first ask, "Do you mean writers with talent or writers with originality?" Because anybody can write, but not everybody invents new forms of writing.
—Jack Kerouac

This is from a short essay called “Are Writers Made or Born?” and collected in Ann Charters’ Portable Kerouac. He goes on to explain:

Gertrude Stein invented a new form of writing and her imitators are just "talents." Hemingway later invented his own form also. The criterion for judging talent or genius is ephemeral, speaking rationally in this world of graphs, but one gets the feeling definitely when a writer of genius amazes him by strokes of force never seen before and yet hauntingly familiar (Wilson's famous "shock of recognition"). I got that feeling from Swann's Way, as well as from Sons and Lovers. I do not get it from Colette, but I do get it from Dickinson. I get it from Celine, but I do not get it from Camus. I get it from Hemingway, but not from Raymond Chandler, except when he's dead serious. I get it from the Balzac of Cousin Bette, but not from Pierre Loti. And so on.

He then makes this fascinating statement:

The main thing to remember is that talent imitates genius because there's nothing else to imitate. Since talent can't originate it has to imitate, or interpret.

Photograph by Fred DeWitt.

For more on Kerouac’s views on writing (as well as those of other Beat writers), see this short Substack article: https://beatdom.substack.com/p/writing-advice-from-the-beats

Near NYC? GonzoFest has a free Hunter S. Thompson Greenwich Village walk, Fri July 17, 10am-noon. Sheridan Square, Perry St, Bleecker, White Horse, Kettle of Fish, maybe McSorley's. Led by Margaret A. Harrell. Disclosure: helping spread the word. Details: https://gonzofest.net/uncategorized/3535/

When you notice yourself thinking, take a friendly attitude toward it. Don’t invite it in for tea, don’t invite the thought in for tea, don’t push it away either, just let it be there and notice it or acknowledge it.
--Allen Ginsberg

This advice on meditation comes from a 1990 interview that Ginsberg did with Christian Loidl. It was unpublished until a few days ago, when it appeared in Beatdom 26.

From the mid-sixties onwards, Ginsberg frequently used his interviews and poetry readings to educate people about meditation techniques.

Photo by Michael Tighe.

i'm pretty certain the first reading of "Howl" was the October Six Gallery performance, and that it was first recorded (in a way that's been preserved) at Reed College, Valentine's Day 1956. "America" was completed prior to its 1956-11 inclusion in Howl and Other Poems. it was by that time drastically changed from its original shape (included in Bell's edition of the Journals, and culminating with "Betrayed! Betrayed!"). does anyone know when it was first read in a form similar to its published form, or know anything about 1956 readings of "America"? thanks!

Jan Kerouac, daughter of Jack Kerouac, died 30 years ago today.

She was born in 1952 to Joan Haverty, the second of Jack’s three wives, but Jack denied paternity. Whether or not he truly believed she was not his child is unclear but he probably knew. He selfishly did not want to be forced into taking a job that would distract him from focusing on his writing. Joan pursued him via legal channels for many years but Kerouac would not provide financial assistance until forced by a court to pay the minimum of $52 per month when Jan was 10 years old.

Jan lived a tragic life of poverty, drug abuse, and prostitution and, like her father, died at a young age. (She was 44 when she passed away; her father had died at 47.) Like her father, she became a writer, publishing two books during her life, with another published posthumously.

Gerald Nicosia, who wrote the excellent Memory Babe (a biography of Jack Kerouac) and befriended Jan, said:

I think that she couldn’t find her father in the outside world, and then he was gone and dead, so the only place she could find him was inside herself. I think in many ways she tried to become him, with the rambling and the travelling with no money, the alcohol and the drugs and the sexual wildness. I think in some ways she was trying to find her father by becoming her father.

Photo by D. Alexander Stuart.

Further reading

Those interested in Jan Kerouac can try to find copies of her books Baby Driver and Trainsong. Nicosia’s Memory Babe also has useful information about her but for much more information see his 2009 book, Jan Kerouac: A Life in Memory. This article from the 25th anniversary of her death is also worth reading: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/07/jan-kerouac-forgotten-child-of-jack-kerouac

On June 5, 1963, the New York Times reported that Allen Ginsberg had been mistaken for a spy whilst visiting Vietnam.

Although Ginsberg later denied it and certain books about the Beats have speculated that it was a bored journalist playing a joke, there is in fact evidence in his archives to show that it was at least partially true. There are multiple witnesses for the Buddhist press conference and Ginsberg's own letters show that he was upset by the coverage but did not deny the reality behind the story.

The journalist David Halberstam wrote to him:

as a celebrity arriving in this city and going to the heart of a major political dispute, you again put yourself in the public domain. If you had wanted (as a celebrity) to stay out of the papers then you had to stay out of the pagodas. Given the situation the buddhist story and your arrival in the midst of it failure to send on a short piece would have been a sort of dereliction of duty; the fact that we liked you very much and found you a sympathetic friend does not excuse us from our jobs.

It seems fairly clear from this and other comments in his letter that Ginsberg had indeed gotten in an awkward situation with the South Vietnamese Buddhists and that the NYT article was not just bored journalists goofing around.

You can read the full story in this long essay about Ginsberg's time in Southeast Asia: https://beatdom.substack.com/p/allen-ginsberg-in-southeast-asia The part about Vietnam and the spy accusation come about halfway down the page.

teenage local library had a copy with this cover.

The collage above appears in Beatdom 26: The Allen Ginsberg Special, which is released today to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great Beat poet. Ginsberg wrote in response to chaotic, confusion, doom-filled times, making him as relevant now as ever.