Collected Letters, 1944-1967 - Softcover

Cassady, Neal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142002178 ISBN 13: 9780142002179

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Synopsis

“Dave Moore's work on this collection is simply awesome....  It should become and remain the definitive reference book for Beat scholars forever.” —Carolyn Cassady

Neal Cassady is best remembered today as Jack Kerouac’s muse and the basis for the character “Dean Moriarty” in Kerouac’s classic On The Road, and as one of Ken Kesey’s merriest of Merry Pranksters, the driver of the psychedelic bus “Further,” immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This collection brings together more than two hundred letters to Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, John Clellon Holmes, and other Beat generation luminaries, as well as correspondence between Neal and his wife, Carolyn. These amazing letters cover Cassady’s life between the ages of 18 and 41 and finish just months before his death in February 1968. Brilliantly edited by Dave Moore, this unique collection presents the “Soul of the Beat Generation” in his own words—sometimes touching and tender, sometimes bawdy and hilarious.  Here is the real Neal Cassady—raw and uncut.

About this title

About the Author

Neal Cassady (1926–1968) was born on the side of the road in Salt Lake City and raised in Denver by an alcoholic father. On a trip to New York City in 1946, he encountered Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg on the campus of Columbia University, a meeting many consider the beginning of the Beat movement.

Reviews

Though he inspired the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Beat icon Cassady never published a single book in his lifetime. A restless and uneven writer, he lacked the discipline of his more determined friends, noting himself in a 1948 letter to Kerouac, "My prose has no individual style as such…perhaps, words are not the way for me." But stylistically sound or not, Cassady’s writing inspired a whole generation of authors, and, as evidenced by the copious letters he penned, his life was marked by artistic conflict and wanderlust. Compiling all of the thrice-married writer’s correspondence into one volume for the first time, British editor Moore adeptly documents Cassady’s rise from teenaged inmate at the Colorado State Reformatory to chauffeur for Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Unfortunately, few of these letters record Cassady’s most famous adventures, such as the cross-country trip with Kerouac that inspired On the Road. The vast majority of the epistles concern Cassady’s failed love affairs and his inability to both keep a job and financially support his wives. Moore gives much needed historical commentary in places, although his decision to sporadically insert letters to Cassady from his ex-wives breaks up the flow of his subject’s central narrative. Although there are a few literary gems within Cassady’s body of work, such as his free-flowing "Joan Anderson" letter, for the most part, his letters prove that his most enduring legacy is his tremendous influence on his Beat friends.
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Neal Cassady--that happening, hard-living, hard-loving hero of the Beat culture is fully here--in his own words. Cassady was part raw sexuality, part inspiration for Kerouac and Ginsberg, part arrogant con man, and part insecure, indecisive drifter. The only thing we can be sure of is that Cassady possessed some major charisma. Women bore his children and his absences and not only coped with but even approved of his interchangeable partner approach. Men fell in love with him, too, whether sexually or in pure awe. Cassady's letters show this and more, revealing a sometimes manic yet incredibly insightful and electric mind and a man so charged with emotion for life and open to his urges that he seemed unable to settle anywhere (including within his various selves) for very long. Well edited and annotated, this volume is an essential addition to Beat literature that strengthens the notion of Cassady as a major Beat figure and, more important, presents Cassady as a man, not an icon. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0142002178
• ISBN 13: 9780142002179
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Moore Dave