Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters [Hardcover]

Jack Kerouac (Author), Allen Ginsberg (Author), Bill Morgan (Editor), David Stanford (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: July 8, 2010

The first collection of letters between the two leading figures of the Beat movement

Writers and cultural icons Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg are the most celebrated names of the Beat Generation, linked together not only by their shared artistic sensibility but also by a deep and abiding friend­ship, one that colored their lives and greatly influenced their writing. Editors Bill Morgan and David Stanford shed new light on this intimate and influential friendship in this fascinating exchange of letters between Kerouac and Ginsberg, two thirds of which have never been published before. Commencing in 1944 while Ginsberg was a student at Columbia University and continuing until shortly before Kerouac's death in 1969, the two hundred letters included in this book provide astonishing insight into their lives and their writing. While not always in agreement, Ginsberg and Kerouac inspired each other spiritually and creatively, and their letters became a vital workshop for their art. Vivid, engaging, and enthralling, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters provides an unparalleled portrait of the two men who led the cultural and artistic movement that defined their generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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 GinsbergÖs work, Thelonius Monk exclaimed, "It makes sense." In its strange way, so does this intense and offbeat correspondence.
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From Booklist

In August 1944, Allen Ginsberg sends a letter to his close friend Jack Kerouac in care of the Bronx County Jail, where he’s 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 Ginsberg’s Howl and Kerouac’s On the Road. This incandescent collection deepens our understanding of an essential literary revolution. --Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (July 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670021946
• ISBN-13: 978-0670021949
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #771,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Movements & Periods > Beat Generation

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read for Beat Fans and Scholars July 20, 2010

By Stephen Silberman

Format:Hardcover

One afternoon in 1944, two aspiring writers met in an apartment a few blocks from the Columbia campus in New York City. The younger of the pair was a 17-year-old poet from New Jersey named Allen Ginsberg. Skinny, bespectacled, and excruciatingly self-conscious, Ginsberg was instantly smitten with the other student -- a blue-eyed, 21-year-old, French-Canadian football player named Jack Kerouac.

Decades later, Kerouac would wryly recall that his first impression of Ginsberg was of "a lecher who wanted everybody in the world to take a bath in the same huge bathtub which would give him a chance to feel legs under the dirty water." After seeing the shy poet say goodbye to each step in his apartment building as he moved out, however, Kerouac recognized Ginsberg as a kindred spirit. Their creative alliance became the central axis of an ever-expanding circle of writers, artists, musicians, and fellow travelers that Kerouac christened the Beat Generation. Many of the authors lionized by academia during the post-war era have been forgotten (read any Conrad Aiken lately?) but the best novels and poems produced by this group - which eventually encompassed William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Diane DiPrima, Michael McClure, Anne Waldman and others -- still seem fresh, hip, and relevant.

The result is a Beat revival that has been ongoing since the '70s. A feature film based on Ginsberg's breakthrough poem "Howl" is coming out this September, featuring the hot actor of the moment, James Franco, in a nearly uncanny performance as the young Ginsberg in San Francisco. Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard and Son Volt's Jay Farrar recently teamed up for a Kerouac tribute called "One Fast Move or I'm Gone." Urban futurist Geoff Manaugh, author of "The BLDGBLOG Book," cites Ginsberg's wide-ranging curiosity as a primary inspiration for his intellectually omnivorous blog.

One of the most industrious toilers in this eternal North Beach of the mind is Bill Morgan, an archivist who negotiated the sale of Ginsberg's voluminous store of papers and personal effects (including his clipped beard) to Stanford University for $1 million in 1994. Morgan has written and edited more than a dozen Beat-related books, including Ginsberg's journals, a 2006 biography of the poet called "I Celebrate Myself," and guides to relevant landmarks in New York and San Francisco.

The collected Kerouac/Ginsberg correspondence, edited by Morgan, is pure literary gold that fans and scholars will mine for decades to come. Ginsberg always gave Kerouac props for turning him into a real writer, but now, readers can see that process in action, as Ginsberg morphs from being the timid author of lovelorn sonnets to the genre-busting powerhouse behind "Kaddish," the epic memoir of his mother's descent into madness.

The letters also challenge some myths propagated by the Beats themselves, such as the notion that Kerouac didn't find his own voice until he read Neal Cassady's benzedrine-fueled accounts of his own sexual exploits in 1950. Kerouac's rapturous descriptions of Manhattan in a letter written two years earlier show that he was already in command of his lyrical flow: "It was too much to believe, near, almost near enough to touch (like the stars), and so huge, intricate, unfathomable and beautiful in its distance, smoking, window-flashing, canyon-shadowed realness there, with the weave of things touching and trembling at its watery apron below."

In 1961, Kerouac predicted to poet and City Lights bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti that "someday 'The Letters of Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac' will make America cry." That day has arrived, and it was worth the wait.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I Love This Book September 8, 2010

By Kenneth M. Goodman

Format:Hardcover

I respectfully disagree with the "greenhornet" review, which complains that Kerouac letters from this collection also appear in the Ann Charters collection. What "greenhornet" fails to take into consideration is the fact that Ginsberg's letters TO Kerouac are not included in the Charters collection, so you get no sense of the "back and forth" flow of the correspondence between these two literary giants and therefore miss (at least) half the story. This collection, however, shows how Jack and Allen's relationship changed over the years. I must say that I absolutely love this book. Check out this ecstatic Buddhist advice from Kerouac: (p. 308). "The mind has its own intrinsic brightness but it's only revealable when you stop thinking and let the body melt away. The longer you hold this position of cessation in light, the greater everything (which is Nothing) gets, the diamond sound gets louder...the transcendental sensation of being able to see through the world like glass, clearer...all your senses become purified and your mind returns to its primal, unborn, original state of perfection Don't you remember before you were born?"
Hooooo weeeee now, that's some cool advice Jack is giving Allen. Because Kerouac and Ginsberg are my two favorite authors, I've actually replaced (on my bookshelf) the Charter books with this collection.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Epistolary Heaven! October 29, 2010

By BeautifulFriend

Format:Hardcover

I also absolutely love this amazing collection and wish I had an exceptional soul mate to collaborate with and share my innermost thoughts with like these two had in one another. There are so many ideas, delightful stories from places like bughouses, creative mini poems, literary references, truth, and glimpses into their lives and souls... I am having fun exploring their references each morning after a night of pure pleasure in the company of this book.