Allen Ginsberg on Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz continues from here
AG: Ah, then he got into the “Chappy sea-net ends”. What’s that all about? – So the next chapter is just pure messing around – I guess he must have got drunk then. Each one of these is.. The method of writing is. I think, useful to know, I think, for all of his books actually, but I noticed it specifically here. It’s divided into.. this book is divided into something like thirteen books altogether. Then each book within it is divided into anywhere between five and thirteen little chapter, chapter-ettes, inside it, and what each chapterette is, of one page, or half a page or two pages, is one session of writing, wherever the writing leads, that’s how the book’s composed – one day you write, why (you’re) sitting down, (he)’s tired, he’s not a (great) big Thomas Hardy novelist anymore, he’s going to die in a year, but he’ll write maybe a paragraph, and that’s a chapter. The next day, he’ll get interested perhaps and idly write three pages, so that’s a whole little other chapter-ette. Then when he’s piled up enough of these little chapter-ettes to account for, like, a season, or an idea. or some passage that he meant to cover in his mind’s eye, chronologically, when he’d done with that, then he’d move on.
to be continued..
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty-one-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-two-and-a-half minutes in