Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg by Jack Kerouac Read Free Book Online Page A

give me such a feeling of superiority, say, moral superiority, that I can’t restrain myself . . . Other times, I feel inferior to you—as I doubtlessly do this moment. I’m afraid that you’ll never understand me fully, and because of that, sometimes you’ll be frightened, disgusted, annoyed, or pleased . . . The thing that makes me different from all of you is the vast inner life I have, an inner life concerned with, of all things, externals . . . But that would be discussing my art, and so intimate is it become that I don’t want to babble about it. You may deplore the fact that I’m “shepherding artistic problems back to the cave,” but it’s certain that that’s where they indeed belong. The bigger and deeper this inner life grows, the less anyone of you will understand me . . . Putting it that way may sound silly, it may particularly amuse Burroughs, but that’s the way it is. Until I find a way to unleash the inner life in an art-method, nothing about me will be clear. And of course, this places me in an enviable position . . . it reminds me of a remark Lucien once made to me: he said: “You never seem to give yourself away completely, but of course dark-haired people are so mysterious.” That’s what he said, by God . . . Then you yourself referred to a “strange madness long growing” in me, in a poem written last winter . . . remember? I just thrive in this, by God. From now on, I think I’ll begin to deliberately mystify everyone; that will be a novelty.
    After all my art is more important to me than anything . . . None of that emotional egocentricity that you all wallow in, with your perpetual analysis of your sex-lives and such. That’s a pretty pastime, that is! I’ve long ago dedicated myself to myself . . . Julian Green, among others has one theme in all his work: the impossibility of dedicating oneself to a fellow being. So Julian practices what he preaches . . . There is just one flaw: one yearns so acutely to dedicate oneself to another, even though it’s so hopeless . . . There’s no choice in the matter.
    I was telling Mimi West last summer how I was searching for a new method in order to release what I had in me, and Lucien said from across the room, “What about the new vision?” The fact was, I had the vision . . . I think everyone has . . . what we lack is the method. All Lucien himself needed was a method.
    I understand Trilling’s impatience with the High Priest of Art . . . There is something phony about that. It’s the gesture adopted when the method doesn’t prove to be self-sufficient . . . after awhile the gesture, the Priestliness, begins to mean more than the art itself. What could be more absurd?
    But let’s not let the whole matter deteriorate, as I feel it will in mentalities such as Trilling’s—that to adopt art with fervor and single-minded devotion is to make the High Priest gesture. No, there’s a distinction to be made, without a doubt.
    So goodnight for now . . . About the Admiral [Restaurant], I’d received your card in time and so was forewarned. I’m keeping Trilling’s letter for awhile in order to show it to a few people: this must make you realize that the quality of my friendship for you is far purer than yours could ever be for me, you with your clay-pigeon complex. There’s nothing that I hate more than the condescension you begin to show whenever I allow my affectionate instincts full play with regard to you; that’s why I always react angrily against you. It gives me the feeling that I’m wasting a perfectly good store of friendship on a little self-aggrandizing weasel. I honestly wish that you had more essential character, of the kind I respect. But then, perhaps you have that and are afraid to show it. At least, try to make me feel that my zeal is not being mismanaged . . . as to your zeal, to hell with that . . .