Satori in Paris and Pic. Jack Kerouac
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rue de Richelieu, with thousands of scholars and millions of books and strange assistant librarians with Zen Master brooms (really French aprons) who admire good handwriting more than anything in a scholar or writer—Here, you feel like an American genius who escaped the rules of Le Lycée. (French High School).
All I wanted was: Histoire généalogique de plusieurs maisons illustres de Bretagne, enrichie des armes et blasons d’icelles … etc. by Fr. Augustin Du Paz, Paris, N.Buon, 1620, Folio Lm2 23 et Rés. Lm 23.
Think I got it? Not on your—
And also I wanted:– Pêre Anselme de Sainte Marie, (né Pierre de Guibours), his Histoire de la maison royale de France, des puirs, grands officiers de la couronne et de la maison du roy et des anciens barons du royaume, R.P. Anselme, Paris, E. Loyson 1674, Lm3 397, (History of the royal house of France, and of also, the great officers of the crown and of the house of the king and of the ancient barons of the kingdom), all of which I had to write down neatly as I could on the call-cards and the old aproned fella told the old lady librarian “It’s well written” (meaning the legibility of the handwriting). Of course they all smelled the liquor on me and thought I was a nut but on seeing I knew what and how to ask for certain books they all went in back to huge dusty files and shelves as high as the roof and must’ve drawn up ladders high enough to make Finnegan fall again with an even bigger noise than the one in Finnegans Wake, this one being the noise of the name, the actual name the Indian Buddhists gave to the Tathagata or passer-through of the Aeon Priyadavsana more than Incalculable Aeons ago :–Here we go, Finn:–
GALADHARAGARGITAGHOSHASUSVARA-NAKSHATRARAGASANKUSUMITABHIGNA.
Now I mention this to show, that if I didnt know libraries, and specifically the greatest library in the world, the New York Public Library where I among a thousand other things actually copied down this long Sanskrit name exactly as it’s spelled, then why should I be regarded with suspicion in the Paris Library? Of course I’m not young any more and “smell of liquor” and even talk to interesting Jewish scholars in the library there (one Éli Flamand copying down notes for a history of Renaissance art and who kindly assisted me’s much’s he could), still I dont know, it seemed they really thought I was nuts when they saw what I asked for, which I copied from their incorrect and incomplete files, not fully what I showed you above about Pêre Anselme as written in the completely correct files of London, as I found later where the national records were not destroyed by fire, saw what I asked for, which did not conform to the actual titles of the old books they had in the back, and when they saw my name Kerouac but with a “Jack” in front of it, as tho I were a Johann Maria Philipp Frimont von Palota suddenly traveling from Staten Island to the Vienna library and signing my name on the call-cards Johnny Pelota and asking for Hergott’s Genealogia augustae gentis Habsburgicae (incomplete title) and my name not spelled “Palota,” as it should, just as my real name should be spelled “Kerouack,” but both old Johnny and me’ve been thru so many centuries of genealogical wars and crests and cockatoos and gules and jousts against Fitzwilliams, agh—
It doesnt matter.
And besides it’s all too long ago and worthless unless you can find the actual family monuments in fields, like with me I go claim the bloody dolmens of Carnac? Or I go and claim the Cornish language which is called Kernuak? Or some little old cliff-castle at Kenedjack in Cornwall or one of the “hundreds” called Kerrier in Cornwall? Or Cornouialles itself outside Quimper and Keroual? (Brittany thar).
Well anyway I was trying to find things out about my old family, I was the first Lebris de Kérouack ever to go back to France in 210 years to find out and I was planning to go to Brittany and Cornwall England next (land of Tristan and King Mark) and later I was gonna hit Ireland and find Isolde and like Peter Sellers get banged in the mug in a Dublin pub.
Ridiculous, but I was so happy on cognac I was going to try.
The whole library groaned with the accumulated debris of centuries of recorded folly, as tho you had to record folly in the Old or the New World anyhow, like my closet with its incredible debris of cluttered old letters by the thousands, books, dust, magazines, childhood boxscores, the likes of which when I woke up the other night from a pure sleep, made me groan to think this is what I was doing with my waking hours: burdening myself with junk neither I nor anybody else should really want or will ever remember in Heaven.
Anyway, an example of my troubles at the library. They didnt bring me those books. On opening them I think they would have cracked apart. What I really shoulda done is say to that head librarian:– “I’m gonna put you in a horseshoe and give you to a horse to wear in the Battle of Chickamauga.”
12.
MEANWHILE I KEPT ASKING EVERYBODY IN PARIS “Where’s Pascal buried? Where’s Balzac’s cemetery?” Somebody finally told me Pascal must certainly be buried out of town at Port Royal near his pious sister, Jansenists, and as for Balzac’s cemetery I didnt wanta go to no cemetery at midnight (Pere Lachaise) and anyway as we were blasting along in a wild taxi ride at 3 A.M. near Montparnasse they yelled “There’s your Balzac! His statue on the square!”
“Stop the cab!” and I got out, swept off me hat in sweeping bow, saw the statue vaguely gray in the drunken misting streets, and that was that. And how could I find my way to Port Royal if I could hardly find my way back to my hotel?
And besides they’re not there at all, only their bodies.
13.
PARIS IS A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN REALLY WALK around at night and find what you dont want, O Pascal.
Trying to make my way to the Opera a hundred cars came charging around a blind curve-corner and like all the other pedestrians I waited to let them pass and then they all started across but I waited a few seconds looking the other charging cars over, all coming from six directions—Then I stepped off the curb and a car came around that curve all alone like the chaser running last in a Monaco race and right at me—I stepped back just in time—At the wheel a Frenchman completely convinced that no one else has a right to live or get to his mistress as fast as he does—As a New Yorker I run to dodge the free zipping roaring traffic of Paris but Parisians just stand and then stroll and leave it to the driver—And by God it works, I saw dozens of cars screech to a stop from 70 M.P.H. to let some stroller have his way!
I was going to the Opera also to eat in any restaurant that looked nice, it was one of my sober evenings dedicated to solitary studious walks, but O what grim rainy Gothic buildings and me walking well in the middle of those wide sidewalks so’s to avoid dark doorways—What vistas of Nowhere City Night and hats and umbrellas—I couldn’t even buy a newspaper—Thousands of people were coming out of some performance somewhere—I went to a crowded restaurant on Boulevard des Italiens and sat way at the end of the bar by myself on a high stool and watched, wet and helpless, as waiters mashed up raw hamburg with Worcestershire sauce and other things and other waiters rushed by holding up steaming trays of good food—The one sympathetic counterman brought menu and Alsatian beer I ordered and I told him to wait awhile—He didnt understand that, drinking without eating at once, because he is partner to the secret of charming French eaters:– they rush at the very beginning with hors d’oeuvres and bread, and then plunge into their entrees (this is practically always before even a slug of wine) and then they slow down and start lingering, now the wine to wash the mouth, now comes the talk, and now the second half of the meal, wine, dessert and coffee, something I cannae do.
In any case I’m drinking my second beer and reading the menu and notice an American guy is sitting five stools away but he is so mean looking in his absolute disgust with Paris I’m afraid to say “Hey, you American?”—He’s come to Paris expecting he woulda wound up under a cherry tree in blossom in the sun with pretty girls on his lap and people dancing around him, instead he’s been wandering the rainy streets alone in all that jargon, doesnt even know where the whore district is, or Notre Dame, or some small cafe they told him about back in Glennon’s bar on Third Avenue, nothing—When he pays for his sandwich he literally throws