Neal Cassady. The man... the myth... the legend... the writer? Not so fast. Neal Cassady was a lot of things, but a writer? That’s a stretch.
While you may struggle to name a book Cassady wrote, he was still one of the most influential persons in American literature.
Neal Cassady was such an eccentric soul that he fascinated the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg who were fueled by the excitement and inspiration he brought into their dim lives.
I found an Associated Content article that gives a brief tale of Cassady’s journey from petty thief, to inspirational figure, to cultural hero, to icon of two of the most controversial and boundry-pushing generations of American literature.
The article goes on to make reference to the “Joan Anderson letter” that was the inspirational influence on Jack Kerouac’s adaptation of spontaneous prose.
In Kerouac’s first experimentation of this new stream of consciousness writing style, he wrote his most famous book, On the Road, about his travels across the country with Cassady, a.k.a Dean Moriarty.
When On the Road was finally published (seven years after it was written), Kerouac and Cassady were instant icons. While Kerouac despised every second of it, Cassady took advantage, though he eventually became ill-minded toward the way he was projected in the novel.
In an interview with Tim Sullivan from the San Francisco Chronicle, Neal’s son, John Allen Cassady, let Sullivan know that his father and the gang never intended to create the beat generation, the hippies, or the anti-war movement.
Regardless of their intentions, they made waves. And leading the way through the decades was Cassady, while Ginsberg followed suit.
As Kerouac faded away into his end-of-life drinking binge, Cassady found himself in the middle of the hippie takeover movement, and then in the driver’s seat (literally) alongside Ken Kesey.
Cassady fell into a crowd with Kesey, a group that would eventually become known as The Merry Pranksters.
Kesey, a well established writer after his best seller, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, led a movement that preached consciousness expansion through LSD experimentation. Cassady was his right-hand man when they hosted their “Happenings” across the crazy scene that was San Francisco in the 1960's.
His iconic fame continued to grow as book after book was published, each one telling the tales of Neal Cassady and his wild adventures.
Tom Wolfe’s book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, was written from the backseat of the Merry Pranksters bus that Cassady drove around with the destination of “further.”
Hunter Thompson’s book, Hells Angels, tells a tale of his experience hanging around with Kesey and Cassady at one of their famous parties.
It was his fast living (and arguably Kerouac’s characterization) that donned Cassady what The Associated Article refers to as the “Holy Goof”, a perception that eventually ate away at his spirits.
While he died alone in Mexico laying alongside a railroad track, Cassady’s legendary legacy continued to live on as his influence stretched on through literature and folk music.
Sources
Hopwood, Jon C. (2008, December 24). Neal Cassady: Holy Goof of the Beat Generation. Associated Content. Retrieved from http://www.associatedcontent.
Sullivan, Tim. (2008, February 7). 11 Things: Neal Cassady. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved fromhttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
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