Neal Cassady

Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s.

Neal Cassady
BornNeal Leon Cassady
(1926-02-08)February 8, 1926
Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
DiedFebruary 4, 1968(1968-02-04) (aged 41)
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
OccupationAuthor, poet
GenreBeat poetry
Literary movementBeat
Notable worksThe First Third
SpouseLuAnne Henderson (1945–1948; annulled),
Carolyn Cassady (1948–1963; divorced),[1]
PartnerDiane Hansen (1950–?),
Anne Murphy (?–1968)
Children5 [2]

He was prominently featured as himself in the "scroll" (first draft) version of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in the 1957 version of that book. In many of Kerouac's later books, Cassady is represented by the character Cody Pomeray. Cassady also appeared in Allen Ginsberg's poems, and in several other works of literature by other writers.

Biography

Early years

Cassady was born to Maude Jean (Scheuer) and Neal Marshall Cassady in Salt Lake City, Utah.[3] His mother died when he was 10, and he was raised by his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado. Cassady spent much of his youth either living on the streets of skid row, with his father, or in reform school.

As a youth, Cassady was repeatedly involved in petty crime. He was arrested for car theft when he was 14, for shoplifting and car theft when he was 15, and for car theft and fencing stolen property when he was 16.

In 1941, the 15-year-old Cassady met Justin W. Brierly, a prominent Denver educator.[4] Brierly was well known as a mentor of promising young men and was impressed by Cassady's intelligence. Over the next few years, Brierly took an active role in Cassady's life. Brierly helped admit Cassady to East High School where he taught Cassady as a student, encouraged and supervised his reading, and found employment for him. Cassady continued his criminal activities, however, and was repeatedly arrested from 1942 to 1944; on at least one of these occasions, he was released by law enforcement into Brierly's safekeeping. In June 1944, Cassady was arrested for possession of stolen goods and served eleven months of a one-year prison sentence. He and Brierly actively exchanged letters during this period, even through Cassady's intermittent incarcerations; this correspondence represents Cassady's earliest surviving letters.[5] Brierly is also believed to have been responsible for Cassady's first homosexual experience.[6]

Personal life
1944 Denver mug shot of Cassady

In October 1945, after being released from prison, Cassady married the 16-year-old LuAnne Henderson.[7] In 1946, the couple traveled to New York City to visit their friend, Hal Chase, another protégé of Brierly. It was while visiting Chase at Columbia University that Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.[8] Although Cassady did not attend Columbia, he soon became friends with them and their acquaintances, some of whom later became members of the Beat Generation. While in New York, Cassady persuaded Kerouac to teach him to write fiction. Cassady's second wife, Carolyn, has stated that, "Neal, having been raised in the slums of Denver amongst the world's lost men, [was] determined to make more of himself, to become somebody, to be worthy and respected. His genius mind absorbed every book he could find, whether literature, philosophy or science. Jack had a formal education, which Neal envied, but intellectually he was more than a match for Jack, and they enjoyed long discussions on every subject."[9]

Carolyn Robinson met Cassady in 1947, while she was studying for her Masters in Theater Arts at the University of Denver.[10] Five weeks after LuAnne's departure, Neal got an annulment from LuAnne and married Carolyn, on April 1, 1948. Carolyn's book, Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg (1990), details her marriage to Cassady and recalls him as, "the archetype of the American Man".[11] Cassady's sexual relationship with Ginsberg lasted off and on for the next 20 years.[12]

During this period, Cassady worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad and kept in touch with his "Beat" acquaintances, even as they became increasingly different philosophically.

The couple eventually had three children and settled down in a ranch house in Monte Sereno, California, 50 miles south of San Francisco, where Kerouac and Ginsberg sometimes visited.[13] This home, built in 1954 with money from a settlement from Southern Pacific Railroad for a train-related accident, was demolished in August 1997.[14] In 1950, Cassady entered into a bigamous marriage with Diane Hansen, a young model who was pregnant with his child, Curtis Hansen.[15]

Cassady traveled cross-country with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions, including the trips documented in Kerouac's On the Road.

Role of drugs

Following an arrest in 1958 for offering to share a small amount of marijuana with an undercover agent at a San Francisco nightclub, Cassady served a two-year sentence at California's San Quentin State Prison in Marin County. After his release in June 1960, he struggled to meet family obligations, and Carolyn divorced him when his parole period expired in 1963. Carolyn stated that she was looking to relieve Cassady of the burden of supporting a family, but "this was a mistake and removed the last pillar of his self-esteem".[16]

After the divorce, in 1963, Cassady shared an apartment with Allen Ginsberg and Beat poet Charles Plymell, at 1403 Gough Street, San Francisco.

Cassady first met author Ken Kesey during the summer of 1962; he eventually became one of the Merry Pranksters, a group who formed around Kesey in 1964 who were vocal proponents of the use of psychedelic drugs.

Travels and death

During 1964, Cassady served as the main driver of the bus named Furthur on the iconic first half of the journey from San Francisco to New York, which was immortalized by Tom Wolfe's book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). Cassady appears at length in a documentary film about the Merry Pranksters and their cross-country trip, Magic Trip (2011), directed by Alex Gibney.

In January 1967, Cassady traveled to Mexico with fellow prankster George "Barely Visible" Walker and Cassady's longtime girlfriend Anne Murphy. In a beachside house just south of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, they were joined by Barbara Wilson and Walter Cox. All-night storytelling, speed drives in Walker's Lotus Elan, and the use of LSD made for a classic Cassady performance — "like a trained bear," Carolyn Cassady once said. Cassady was beloved for his ability to inspire others to love life. Yet at rare times he was known to express regret over his wild life, especially as it affected his family. At one point Cassady took Cox, then 19, aside and told him: "[T]wenty years of fast living — there's just not much left, and my kids are all screwed up. Don't do what I have done."

During the next year, Cassady's life became less stable, and the pace of his travels more frenetic. He left Mexico in May, traveling to San Francisco, Denver, New York City, and points in between. Cassady then returned to Mexico in September and October (stopping in San Antonio, on the way to visit his oldest daughter who had just given birth to his first grandchild), visited Ken Kesey's Oregon farm in December, and spent the New Year with Carolyn at a friend's house near San Francisco. Finally, in late January 1968, Cassady returned to Mexico once again.

On February 3, 1968, Cassady attended a wedding party in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. After the party, he went walking along a railroad track to reach the next town, but passed out in the cold and rainy night wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans. In the morning, he was found in a coma by the tracks, reportedly by Anton Black, later a professor at El Paso Community College, who carried Cassady over his shoulders to the local post office building. Cassady was then transported to the closest hospital where he died a few hours later on February 4, four days short of his 42nd birthday.

The exact cause of Cassady's death remains uncertain. Those who attended the wedding party confirm that he took an unknown quantity of secobarbital, a powerful barbiturate sold under the brand name Seconal. The physician who performed the autopsy wrote simply, "general congestion in all systems." When interviewed later, the physician stated that he was unable to give an accurate report because Cassady was a foreigner and there were drugs involved. "Exposure" is commonly cited as his cause of death, although his widow believes he may have died of kidney failure.[17]

Children

Cassady has five known children: Robert William Hyatt Jr. (1945), Cathleen Joanne Cassady (1948), Jami Cassady Ratto (1949), Curtis W. Hansen (1950), and John Allen Cassady (1951). Robert, son of Neal Cassady and Maxine Beam, is an artist working in Arvada, Colorado. In February 2017, he was featured in Westword Magazine.[18] Cathleen, known as Cathy, is the mother of the only grandchild Neal met. Cathy, Jami, and John keep a website in memory of their parents and parents' "beat" friends.[19][20]

Curt, born from a bigamous marriage with Diana Hansen, died April 30, 2014, aged 63. He was one of the co-founders of radio station WEBE 108, in Bridgeport, Connecticut.[21]

Writing style and influence

Cassady is credited with helping Kerouac break with his Thomas Wolfe-influenced sentimental style, as seen in The Town and the City (1950). After reading Cassady's letters, Kerouac was inspired to write his story in Cassady's communication style: "...in a rush of mad ecstasy, without self-consciousness or mental hesitation".[22]

This fluid writing style, reading more like a stream of consciousness or hypermanic rapid-fire conversation than written prose, is best demonstrated within Cassady's letters to family and friends. In a letter to Kerouac from 1953, Cassady begins with the following fervent sentence;

Well it's about time you wrote, I was fearing you farted out on top that mean mountain or slid under while pissing in Pismo, beach of flowers, food and foolishness, but I knew the fear was ill-founded for balancing it in my thoughts of you, much stronger and valid if you weren't dead, was a realization of the experiences you would be having down there, rail, home, and the most important, climate, by a remembrance of my own feelings and thoughts (former low, or more exactly, nostalgic and unreal; latter hi) as, for example, I too seemed to spend time looking out upper floor windows at sparse, especially night times, traffic in females—old or young.[23]

On the Road became a sensation. By capturing Cassady's voice, Kerouac discovered a unique style of his own that he called "spontaneous prose," a stream of consciousness prose form.[24]

Cassady's own written work was never formally published in his lifetime, and he left behind only a half-written manuscript and a number of personal letters. Cassady admitted to Kerouac in a letter from 1948, "My prose has no individual style as such, but is rather an unspoken and still unexpressed groping toward the personal. There is something there that wants to come out; something of my own that must be said. Yet, perhaps, words are not the way for me." [23]

Archival footage
  • Anthem to Beauty (1997).
  • Love Always, Carolyn — A film about Kerouac, Cassady and Me (2011), a documentary that features Cassady in archival segments, as well as interviews with Cassady's ex-wife Carolyn and his children.[25]
  • Magic Trip (2011), Alex Gibney's documentary film using the footage shot by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters during their cross-country bus trip in the Furthur bus; the hyperkinetic Cassady is frequently seen driving the bus, jabbering, and sitting next to a sign that boasts, "Neal gets things done."
  • The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir (2015).

Dramatizations
  • The film Who'll Stop the Rain (1978) is a psychological drama released by United Artists. The film is based on Robert Stone's novel Dog Soldiers (1974), and stars Nick Nolte as Ray Hicks. Stone based the character of Hicks on Beat writer Neal Cassady. Stone became acquainted with Cassady through novelist Ken Kesey, a classmate of Stone in graduate school at Stanford University. Hicks' death scene on the railroad tracks at the film's conclusion was directly based on Cassady's death along a railroad track outside of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 1968.
  • Heart Beat (1980), which portrays Neal Cassady's friendship with Jack Kerouac, stars Nick Nolte as Cassady and John Heard as Kerouac. The film was based on the memoir of the same name by Carolyn Cassady (played by Sissy Spacek). Talk show host Steve Allen, who was a big supporter of On The Road, appears briefly as himself. Released immediately after Warner Bros. acquired Orion Pictures, the film was given a limited release due to studio politics and a perceived lack of public interest. The film quickly fell from view.
  • What Happened to Kerouac (1986).
  • The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997), with Thomas Jane as Cassady, is based on the "Joan Anderson letter" written by Cassady to Jack Kerouac in December 1950. Until 2014, much of this letter was thought to have been lost, though an excerpt had been published in a 1964 edition of John Bryan's magazine Notes from Underground.
  • A short film Luz Del Mundo (2007) deals with Cassady's friendship and adventures with Jack Kerouac. Cassady is played by Austin Nichols, and Kerouac is played by Will Estes.[26]
  • In the film Across the Universe (2007), the character Dr. Robert, played by Bono, is said to have been inspired by Neal Cassady.[27]
  • Neal Cassady (2007), a biographical film [28] focused mostly on the Merry Prankster years and stars Tate Donovan as Neal, Amy Ryan as Carolyn Cassady, Chris Bauer as Kesey, and Glenn Fitzgerald as Kerouac; Noah Buschel wrote and directed the film, which deals primarily with how Neal became trapped by his fictional alter-ego, Dean Moriarty. The Cassady family criticized this film as highly inaccurate.[29]
  • Howl (2010), Jon Prescott, chronicles Allen Ginsberg's creation of the poem "Howl" and the obscenity trial surrounding its publication; Jon Prescott portrays Cassady.[30][31]
  • In On the Road (2012), the dramatic adaptation of the book, Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarty is portrayed by Garrett Hedlund.[32]
  • In Big Sur (2013), Josh Lucas portrays Cassady.

In literature
  • David Amram's OFFBEAT: Collaborating with Kerouac (2002)
  • Charles Bukowski's Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969) as "Kerouac's boy Neal C."
  • Allen Ginsberg:
    • "The Green Automobile" (1953) as "my old companion"
    • "Howl" (1956) as "N.C., secret hero of these poems"
    • "Many Loves" (1956)
    • "On Neal's Ashes" (1968)
    • "The Fall of America" (1968)
    • "Elegies for Neal Cassady" (1968)
  • John Clellon Holmes:
    • Go (1952) as "Hart Kennedy"
    • The Horn (1958) as "the driver"
  • Jack Kerouac:
    • On the Road (1957) as "Dean Moriarty". Cassady was the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's On the Road, and the character "Cody Pomeray" in many of Kerouac's other novels. In the surviving first draft of On the Road, which Kerouac typed on a 120-foot roll of paper specially constructed for that purpose, the story's protagonist's name remains "Neal Cassady".[33] However, in Kerouac's final edition of On The Road, Cassady's character is known as "Dean Moriarty". In On the Road, the narrator, Sal Paradise (representing Jack Kerouac) states, "He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him ... Somewhere along the line, I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line, the pearl would be handed to me."[34]
    • On the Road: The Original Scroll, as Neal Cassady[35]
    • The Subterraneans (1958) as "Leroy"
    • The Dharma Bums (1958) as "Cody"
    • Book of Dreams (1960) as "Cody Pomeray"
    • Visions of Cody (1960; published 1973) as "Cody Pomeray"
    • Big Sur (1962) as "Cody Pomeray"
    • Desolation Angels (novel) (1965) as "Cody Pomeray"
  • Ken Kesey:
    • "Over the Border" (1973), as "Houlihan"
    • Kesey also wrote a fictional account of Cassady's death in the short story "The Day After Superman Died" (1979, referring to Cassady as "Houlihan"), wherein Cassady is portrayed as mumbling about the number of railroad ties he had counted on the line (64,928) as his last words before dying. It was published as a part of Kesey's collection Demon Box (1986).
    • One of the interviewees in the film Magic Trip (2011) states that Cassady was the inspiration for the main character of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962).
  • Phil Lesh's Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (2005)
  • Nick Mamatas' Move Under Ground (2004)
  • Chuck Rosenthal's Jack Kerouac's Avatar Angel: His Last Novel (2001), as "Cody Pomeray."
  • Robert Stone:
  • In Hunter S. Thompson's book Hell's Angels (1966), Cassady is described as, "the worldly inspiration for the protagonist of two recent novels", drunkenly yelling at police during the famed Hells Angels parties at Ken Kesey's residence in La Honda, California. Although Cassady's name was removed from the book at the insistence of Thompson's publisher, the description is clearly a reference to the character based on Cassady in Jack Kerouac's works, On the Road and Visions of Cody (1951–1952).
  • Tom Wolfe also chronicled Cassady's drunken yelling at police during Hells Angels parties in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).

In music

Published works
  • "The Joan Anderson Letter", written by Cassady to Jack Kerouac (December, 1950): it was until 2014, thought to have been lost, though an excerpt had been published in a 1964 edition of John Bryan's magazine Notes from Underground.[39] Associated Press reported in November 24, 2014, that the entire letter had been found. The 18-page letter, which is said to have substantially inspired Kerouac's subsequent writing style, was to be auctioned on December 17, 2014, but a legal dispute over ownership prevented the auction from proceeding.[40][41] The original letter was auctioned by Heritage Auctions as Lot 45378 on March 8, 2017.[42][43][44]
  • "Pull My Daisy" (1951, poetry) written with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
  • "Genesis West: Volume Seven" (1965, magazine article) [45]
  • "First Night of the Tapes" with Jack Kerouac. "Transatlantic Review" December, 1969.
  • The First Third (1971, autobiographical novel), published three years after Cassady's death.
  • Grace Beats Karma: Letters from Prison (collection of poetry and letters). New York, NY: Blast Books, 1993. ISBN 0-922233-08-X
  • Neal Cassady: Collected Letters, 1944–1967 (2004, letters).

Published biographies
  • The Holy Goof: A Biography of Neal Cassady, by William Plummer (1981)
  • Neal Cassady, Volume One, 1926–1940, by Tom Christopher (1995)
  • Neal Cassady, Volume Two, 1941–1946, by Tom Christopher (1998)
  • Neal Cassady: The Fast Life of a Beat Hero, by David Sandison & Graham Vickers (2006)
  • Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg, by Carolyn Cassady. Black Spring Press (1990).

Literary studies
  • Stephenson, Gregory (2007) [1987]. "Friendly and Flowing Savage: The Literary Legend of Neal Cassady". Incorporated in The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation (1990).

References

Notes
  1. Cochrane, Lauren (2011-01-18). "Neal Cassady: Drug-taker. Bigamist. Family man". The Guardian. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
  2. Daurer, Gregory (2017-02-07). "Neal Cassady's Denver Legacy Includes a Secret Son, Robert Hyatt". Westword.com. Retrieved 2018-04-14.
  3. Sandison, David; Vickers, Graham (2006-11-19). "Neal Cassady". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
  4. Cassady & Moore 2004, p. 1.
  5. Cassady & Moore 2004, p. 1; Sandison & Vickers 2006, pp. 42–46.
  6. Turner 1996, p. 79 ("Brierly had been sexually attracted to Neal, and managed to entice him into his first homosexual experience.");Sandison & Vickers 2006, pp. 41–42 ("Brierly was most likely also a closet homosexual, and it was probably through him that Neal Cassady would first discover and explore gay sex and serve as a hustler in Denver's gay community.") According to some reports, however, Brierly's sexual orientation was an open secret. See Weir, John (2005-06-22), "Everybody knows, nobody cares, or: Neal Cassady's Penis", TriQuarterly, archived from the original on 2009-06-20.
  7. "RootsWeb: OBITUARIES-L [OBITS] Neal Cassady".
  8. Asher, Levi. "Neal Cassady". beatmuseum.org. Literary Kicks. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  9. "Neal Cassady Carolyn Cassady Frequently Asked Questions".
  10. Campbell, James (2013-09-23). "Carolyn Cassady obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  11. Ferlinghetti, Lawrence (1990). Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg. Nation. pp. 652–653.
  12. Young, Allen (1973). Allen Ginsberg: the Gay Sunshine Interview. Bolinas, California: Grey Fox Press. p. 1.
  13. Cassady, Carolyn (1990). Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg. London: Black Spring Press. ISBN 0-948238-05-4.
  14. "Metroactive Features – Neal Cassady's House".
  15. Cochrane, Lauren (2011-01-18). "Neal Cassady: Drug-taker. Bigamist. Family man". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  16. "Carolyn Cassady". Neal Cassady Estate.
  17. Neal Cassidy website (retrieved 26 January 2009)
  18. Daurer, Gregory (7 February 2017). "Neal Cassady's Denver Legacy Includes a Secret Son, Robert Hyatt". Retrieved 8 November 2018.
  19. "The legacy of iconic literary figure Neal Cassady lives on in Santa Cruz with his son and daughter". Retrieved June 27, 2014.
  20. "Cassady Family's Website". Neal Cassady Estate. Retrieved June 27, 2014.
  21. "Curtis Hansen Obituary". Milford Mirror. Retrieved June 27, 2014.
  22. Asher, Levi. "Neal Cassady". LitKicks.come. Literary Kicks. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  23. "Neal Cassady: American Muse, Holy Fool". New Yorker.
  24. Knight, Arthur and Kit (1988). Kerouac and the Beats. New York, NY: Paragon House. ISBN 1-55778-067-6.
  25. "Love Always, Carolyn". Documentary film. IMDB. Retrieved 9 September 2011.
  26. "Luz del mundo". 1 January 2000 – via IMDb.
  27. Inc, Slacker. "AOL Radio Stations". Archived from the original on 2016-03-25. Retrieved 2017-01-19.
  28. "Neal Cassady". 11 October 2007 – via IMDb.
  29. http://www.nealcassadyestate.com/carolyn.html, retrieved 28 August 2007
  30. Brooks, Barnes (December 2, 2009). "Sundance Tries to Hone Its Artsy Edge". newyorktimes.com.
  31. "Alessandro Nivola is hotter than Audrey Tautou". BlackBookMag.com. Retrieved 2009-09-22.
  32. "On the Road". 23 May 2012 – via IMDb.
  33. Paul Maher Jr. Kerouac: The Definitive Biography (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004) p. 233 ISBN 0-87833-305-3
  34. Kerouac, Jack (1976). On The Road. USA: Penguin Group. ISBN 1-101-12757-0.
  35. Bignell, Paul; Johnson, Andrew (2007-07-29). "On the Road (uncensored). Discovered: Kerouac 'cuts'". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
  36. "Other One". Dead.net. Retrieved August 4, 2007.
  37. http://arts.ucsc.edu/GDead/AGDL/other1.html Archived 2008-05-14 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 23 August 2007
  38. "Cassidy's Tale". Retrieved 8 November 2018.
  39. Sandison & Vickers 2006, pp. 282
  40. "Kerouac letter discovery shows poet didn't toss it". Boston Herald. November 24, 2014.
  41. Neary, Lynne (November 24, 2014). "Long lost letter that inspired On the Road Style has been found". National Public Radio.
  42. "2017 March 8 Heritage Rare Book Auction #6174". Heritage Auctions. February 2017.
  43. "Update/News of the Joan Anderson Letter". March 9, 2017.
  44. "Long-Lost Letter to Jack Kerouac Reaches Its Final Destination". September 27, 2017.
  45. Cassady, Neal. "Genesis West Magazine". Abebooks. Retrieved 18 September 2018.

Bibliography
  • Cassady, Neal; Moore, Dave (2004), Neal Cassady: Collected Letters, 1944–1967, Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0-14-200217-9
  • Collins, Ronald & Skover, David (March 2013). Mania: The Story of the Outraged & Outrageous Lives that Launched a Cultural Revolution. Top-Five Books.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  • Sandison, David; Vickers, Graham (2006), Neal Cassady: The Fast Life of a Beat Hero, Chicago Review Press, ISBN 1-55652-615-6.
  • Turner, Steve (1996), Angelheaded Hipster: A Life of Jack Kerouac, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, ISBN 0-7475-2480-7

Further reading

Archival resources
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