Friends,
Two mysterious discoveries...
1) someone's lunch, french fries and a burrito in a tin tray
thing under the back seat of my car. not mine. who have I given
a ride recently? why would they put their lunch there?
2)short of combs. got a new one just the other day...
in a pocket of a sports jacket I have not worn for a while,
four pocket combs. four.
Speaking of slightly eccentric people, as perhaps Robert Lax
the poet we have been speaking of, was--or at least a very
unusual man going a different way than many are able to...an
almost unique way, well everyone is unique but as Samuel Beckett
said:
"Why do I read Robert Lax? For the sheer joy of it.
I don't know another poet ...like him."
What a different sort of writer and man Beckett was than Lax,
although they both moved into minimalist writing... But what
has been interesting to me to discover from reading "The
Way of the Dreamcatcher." is a real friendship between Lax
and Jack Kerouac and also Lax's knowing Allen Ginsberg.
With Kerouac there was a connection preexisting in Columbia
University, and the group around Columbia's
Jester magazine, Merton, Lax, Ed Rice, Ab Reinhardt, was it seems an
early inspiration for the Beat Generation writers. It is
interesting to think about Lax and Kerouac together in
particular, both Catholic (Lax a convert but deeply religious
as a Jew before that also,Kerouac born) both very aware of
Eastern religions, both playful-- Kerouac called Lax "a
laughing Buddha". I find on the internet some paragraphs on
a part of their friendship at least ,which may be interesting
enough to share.
( Read more... )I find on Ginsberg the note, in Dreamcatcher, that when they first
met he asked Lax "do you believe in God?" Bob replied "I am a Catholic."
three years later Allen called Lax to ask how he was ,immediately asking
"Are you still Catholic?" which Lax says "I thought that was pretty
funny."
Now two things:
1) I am interested to know more about Lax-Kerouac friendship. Continued
correspondence in later years? meeting mentioned in Dreamcatcher where
I think it said they went to buy a cat together, when and where?
2)It strikes me that while Lax and Merton used a very special style
in kidding around,elliptic, loose, also were very playful, as in
a new york subway together miming going into a trance whenever the
speed of the train went up and coming down when it lowered etc.
all of this parallel to Kerouac. that in talking about religion
Jack never seems to allow himself out of that style so in the
notes quoted:
"[I'll] prove at last by example not only by words -
Bless Jesus."the "Bless Jesus" is in that loose jokey style isn't it and yet of
course it is serious. Perhaps he never found the peace and happiness
that characterized Lax by all report and this ironic distancing
was part of that distance from his innermost hopes...but also it can
lead to undervaluing Kerouac's seriousness.
I have not seen this addressed in discussion of Kerouac, not that I
have read a lot on him, but this breezy beat style seems to me to
work, on some things, better in correspondence like the Merton-
Lax letters, or let it be Kerouac-Lax, than in a novel.
These thoughts and as always invite all your response on them
or on anything else at all, yours
+Seraphim
.
Inscribed by Ginsberg "Portrait of Jack Kerouac
w/brakeman's manual in pocket. 1953. Allen Ginsberg."
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