Allen’s observations on Kerouac and Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz continue from here
AG: So how do you draw the line between complete honesty and… disillusionment, disillusionment, complete honesty and disillusionment or drunken soul. I don’t know. I guess we all have the same problem (or do we? – I don’t know). We all encounter this same situation, I think. I never solved the problem because when I read his books I always realize that he was enormously broodingly vaster of mind and heart than myself and that my irritation was jejune and egoistic and self-defensive and contributed to his death and disillusionment. So I always feel guilty. On the other hand occasionally, ,when I come up against it, I realize that he’s full of shit – and vain! – totally vain (that whole thing wasn’t wisdom at all, it was like some kind of complete paranoid vanity! -that’s why it rubbed so badly, that’s why it wasn’t … that’s why it wasn’t “skillful means”, so to speak, that’s why he drank himself to death). I’ll find some occasion in here to point out the vanity ( I mean the whole book – he’s saying it himself – The Vanity of Duluoz – well, hic calix, make sure the wine’s full.) Of course, I don’t know, maybe from some supreme high tea-cup Ignu Vajrayana viewpoint that is ultimate wisdom. But, given the situation, that here we all are, decades later with something to do. Well, as he said to Carl Solomon, “This madhouse shot of yours is not exactly the immemorial miel – (“miele” is the French for honey) – “This madhouse shot of yours is not exactly the immemorial honey” – i.e.Carl kept saying he was crazy and had to go back to the bug house, year after year, decade after decade, that was his whole literary art, like, all sorts of essays about going back to the bughouse, or what was wrong with society? or was his nose too big or was it that society had the wrong appreciation of noses? – You might check out Carl Solomon’s “Mishaps”. comma “Perhaps”, Mishaps Perhaps, which the library now has copies of, writings that go back to the ‘Forties (mostly ’47, ’48, a little later than this period we’re talking about)
So Jack wrote to Carl, or told me to tell Carl, or wrote in a book which I brought Carl – “This madhouse…” (a great classic slogan) – “This madhouse shot of yours is not exactly the immemorial miel” (“This madhouse shot of yours is not exactly the immemorial honey”) – “This hic calix shot of yours is not exactly the immemorial honey (the immemorial ambrosia), it might be said. Otherwise we’re not sitting here”.
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-six-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately forty minutes in