Tag Archives: Neal Cassady

Happy 88th Birthday, Neal Cassady!

8 Feb

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Neal Leon Cassady was born on this day in 1926 in Salt Lake City, Utah. His mother, Maude Jean (Scheuer), passed away when he was just ten years old, and his father, Neal Marshall Cassady, went on to raise him on the mean streets of skid row in Denver, Colorado. With an alcoholic father, Cassady soon turned to a life of crime, and was arrested when he was only fourteen years old. At nineteen years old, and fresh out of prison, Cassady married a vivacious fifteen year old by the name of LuAnne Henderson. Together they set out for New York City in 1947 to meet up with a Denver friend who had gone on to study at Columbia. It was through Hal Chase that Cassady met two other young guys who studied at Columbia: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. His life would forever change.

Returning to Denver, Cassady met Carolyn Robinson, a young teaching assistant at the theater arts department of the Denver Art Museum, whom he married, after divorcing LuAnne. By 1950 he was in a bigamous relationship with Diane Hansen. Cassady’s romances, command of a steering wheel, and zeal for life inspired Kerouac’s writing, and he became Dean Moriarty in On the Road and the title character of Visions of Cody.

What is sometimes overlooked, though, and which I want to celebrate on his birthday is Cassady’s own writing. It was Cassady’s great “Joan Anderson letter” that took Kerouac’s writing to the next level, inspiring him to become more confessional and spontaneous. Although he died in 1968, Cassady also left us with his own memoir, The First Third. Here’s how it’s described on Barnes & Noble:

Immortalized as Dean Moriarty by Jack Kerouac in his epic novel, On the Road, Neal Cassady was infamous for his unstoppable energy and his overwhelming charm, his savvy hustle and his devil-may-care attitude. A treasured friend and traveling companion of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Ken Kesey, to name just some of his cohorts on the beatnik path, Cassady lived life to the fullest, ready for inspiration at any turn.

Before he died in Mexico in 1968, just four days shy of his forty-second birthday, Cassady had written the jacket blurb for this book: “Seldom has there been a story of a man so balled up. No doubt many readers will not believe the veracity of the author, but I assure these doubting Thomases that every incident, as such, is true.”

As Ferlingetti writes in his editor’s note, Cassady was “an early prototype of the urban cowboy who a hundred years ago might have been an outlaw on the range.” Here are his autobiographical writings, the rambling American saga of a truly free individual.

For a critical analysis on the “facts” of The First Third, check out David Sandison and Graham Vickers’ Neal Cassady.

While the salacious details of his personal biography are important perhaps to understanding where he came from and his perspective on life, they should not be confused for the totality of who he is and what he offered the world. Contrary to his wild persona, his prose is tame. He methodically plots out his lineage, trying his best to adhere to some intangible idea of what it means to sound literary. Yet it’s also raw. Cassady refuses to conform to the standard rules of grammar, instead allowing his words to gush over the page.

In honor of Cassady’s birthday, read some of his work! It’s the best way to understand the man behind the myth.

What do you think of Neal Cassady’s writing style? Do you have a favorite biography about Cassady?

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Neal Cassady’s Birthday Bash!

7 Feb

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Denver is celebrating Neal Cassady’s birthday (which is tomorrow) tonight! Cassady is, of course, the real life inspiration behind Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, lived with The Grateful Dead for a short time, and drove the bus Further.

His children, Cathy, Jami, and John Allen, will be at Mercury Cafe to celebrate their father and mother’s legacy. David Amram will set the tone for the evening with his vivacious jazz.

Here’s what Brown Paper Bag, where you can purchase tickets (only 20 bucks!), has to say about the event:

5th Annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash
February 7, 2014
8:00pm
Mercury Cafe 2199 California St.  DENVER!
*A full set of jazz from: the David Amram Quartet.
*Tribute to their late mother Carolyn by: Cathy, Jami and John Allen Cassady
*Poetry, music, reefer and revolution from: John Sinclair and the Blues Scholars
*Also: Readings, reminiscences and more on what would have been the 88th birthday of Denver’s self described, “unnatural son” Neal Cassady.

I want to go so badly! Anyone want to buy me a plane ticket?!

 

 

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Remembering Neal Cassady

4 Feb

“I recently heard a quote in a play, the source I forget: ‘A man’s measure is not from the amount of love he gives to others but the amount he is loved.’ I have to think about that, but Neal was/is certainly loved.”

~ Carolyn Cassady

Just a few days shy of his forty-second birthday, Neal Cassady passed away. On February 3, 1968, he left a wedding party in Mexico, where he’d taken a barbiturate known for its hypnotic effects, and began walking along the railroad tracks in San Miguel to reach the next town. Somewhere along the way, he passed out. He was found in a coma the next morning. He was taken to a hospital, but died a few hours later. The autopsy report read: “general congestion in all systems.” He was apparently cremated.

Popular imagination most readily remembers Neal Cassady as a muse, a character in novels, the man behind the wheel of the bus Further in grainy film footage. Check him out in these “Beat” novels:

  • Dean Moriarty in On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  • Dean in Jazz of the Beat Generation by Jack Kerouac
  • Cody Pomeray in Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac
  • Cody Pomeray in Book of Dreams by Jack Kerouac
  • Cody Pomeray in Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac
  • Cody Pomeray in Book of Sketches by Jack Kerouac
  • Neal Pomeray in Neal and the Three Stooges by Jack Kerouac
  • Leroy in The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac
  • Hart Kennedy in Go by John Clellon Holmes

Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, and The Grateful Dead also wrote about their experiences with Cassady.

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Contest: Show Us Your Burning Furiously Beautiful

21 Nov

Show us YOUR copy of Burning Furiously Beautiful for a chance to win Jack Kerouac memorabilia.

Paul is giving away his own personal copy of an audio cassette that Carolyn Cassady made for him, labeled with her handwriting (with also the mailer too, which bears her signature), of Jack and Neal Cassady reading into a tape recorder. It’s one-of-a-kind and can be yours.
Rules: Just buy yourself a copy and find a cool as Miles Davis place to take a picture of it or of you holding it and post it on the official Burning Furiously Beautiful Facebook page and then find everyone you know to LIKE it. Only “likes” on the Facebook page — not if you post the pic here or elsewhere on Facebook — will be counted. The entry with the most “likes” by November 28, 2013, will win

How to purchase:

We’ve already received some really creative entries, which I’m excited to share with you! Even if you’re not interested in entering the contest, you can cast your vote for your favorite photo.

Contest1Richard Marsh

Contest2Kate Levin

Contest3Roxanne Leinhauser-Brennan

Contest4Katie Ingegneri

Contest5Anne-Marie Giroux

Contest6Ben Stables

Vote or enter here!

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“Burning Furiously Beautiful” eBook Now Available!

30 Sep

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Happy Monday! I have BIG news to share today. Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is now available as an eBook! You can get it for $8.99 at Lulu.

Here’s a bit about the book from Lulu:

Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is the most up-to-date and accurate account of the development of American writer Jack Kerouac’s groundbreaking 1957 novel, On the Road. Using archival resources as the foundation of this book, Kerouac scholars Paul Maher Jr. and Stephanie Nikolopoulos have fashioned a gripping account of the internal and external experiences of Kerouac’s literary development.

And here’s our synopsis:

Fueled by coffee and pea soup, Jack Kerouac speed-typed On the Road in just three weeks in April 1951. He’d been traveling America for the past ten years and now, at last, the furious energy of his experiences flowed through his fingertips in a mad rush, pealing forth on a makeshift scroll that he laboriously taped together. The On the Road scroll has since become literary legend, and now Burning Furiously Beautiful sets the record straight, uncovering, among other things, the true story behind one of America’s greatest novels. Burning Furiously Beautiful explores the real lives of the key characters of the novel—Sal Paradise, Dean Moriarty, Carlo Marx, Old Bull Hubbard, Camille, Marylou, and others. Ride along on the real-life adventures through 1940s America that inspired On the Road. By tracing the evolution of Kerouac’s literary development and revealing his startlingly original writing style, this book explains how it took years—not weeks—to ultimately write the seemingly sporadic 1957 novel, On the Road. This revised and expanded edition of Jack Kerouac’s American Journey (2007) takes a closer look at the rise of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.

The ebook can be read in the following formats: Windows, PC/PocketPC, Mac OS, Linux OS, Nook, Apple iPhone/iPod/iPad, Android, Kindle (Amazon), Sony Reader, Blackberry Devices, Palm OS PDAs, Cybook Opus, Bebook (Endless Ideas), Papyrus (Samsung) Jetbook (Ectaco), Windows Mobile OS PDAs.

A print book is forthcoming.

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Sweet Rides: Literary Modes of Transportation

28 May

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As I mentioned, I’ve been thinking a lot about transportation. So much so, in fact, that I was inspired to start a new board on Pinterest devoted to modes of transportation. It’s called Sweet Rides. I found some sleek cars that would make Neal Cassady‘s fingers itch, but I also looked at alternative vehicles and the writers and literary characters who might use them. I thought about Mark Twain and river boats. Wes Anderson and trains. Che Guevara and motorcycles. Anne of Green Gables and rowboats.  Poets doing spoken word on the New York City subway.

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Jack Kerouac’s Birthday Celebrations Happening Across the Country

7 Mar

Jack Kerouac’s birthday is coming up on the 12th, and there are a couple of celebratory events happening.

Lowell Celebrates Kerouac has several days of fantastic events centered around what might be my favorite (it’s hard to choose just one!) Kerouac book, Visions of Gerard. They will also be honoring David Amram, who has been a great mentor in my life and work:

Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! will be spotlighting Jack Kerouac’s deeply spiritual and Lowell-based book, Visions of Gerard, throughout this 50th anniversary year of its publication, starting with the birthday events of March 2013. March will feature music by celebrated world musician David Amram, musical collaborator and friend of Kerouac, an art exhibition, educational programs, walking tours, poetry, readings, and other cultural events that celebrate the life and writings of Jack Kerouac.

Friday 8 March 2013

Kerouac: People, Places, and Things
Time: 6:00 to 10:00pm
Location: Lowell Telecommunications Center Gallery, 246 Market St.
Kerouac-influenced art exhibition opening reception

The Magnificent Pigtail Shadow
Time: 6:30 to 7:45pm
Location: Lowell Telecommunications Center Gallery, 246 Market St.
A film by Steven Cerio with the director to present, plus a reading from Big Sur played against the director’s newest short

Music for Jack
Time: 8:00 to 9:30pm
Location: Lowell Telecommunications Center Gallery, 246 Market St.
David Amram and friends. A $10 donation is requested.

Saturday 9 March 2013

Amram and Marion
Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm
Location: Welles Emporium, 175 Merrimack St.
Help Lowell Celebrates Kerouac celebrate its new merchandise home at the Welles Emporium. Musician-author David Amram and poet Paul Marion help Lowell Celebrates Kerouac celebrate its new merchandise home at the Welles Emporium. David and Paul will do readings from their books and poetry as well as Kerouac passages with musical interludes by David. They will sign books and CDs.

Jack and Woody: Two American Originals
Time: 1:00pm
Location: Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack St.
Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac life parallels, talk by author Steve Edington.

Mystic Jack Tour
Time: 3:30 to 5:00pm
Location: Meet at St. Louis Church, 221 West Sixth St.
Led by master Kerouac interpreter Roger Brunelle, specially presented this year in honor of 50th anniversary of publication of Visions of Gerard. A $10 donation is requested.

Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Celebrates Amram!
Time: 8:00pm to ?
Location: White Eagle Cafe, 585 Market St.
Musical event with David Amram, the Part-Time Buddhas, and guest musicians. A $10 donation is requested.

Sunday 10 March 2013

Walking Jack Loop Walk
Time: 12:00 to 5:00pm
Location: Meet at Jack Kerouac Commemorative at Jack Kerouac Park, intersection of French and Bridge Streets
End at Old Worthen Tavern at 5:00 for toasting the birth of Jack Kerouac in March of 1922

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Kerouac Birthday Walk
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Starts at Centralville Social Club, 364 W. 6th St.
On Jack Kerouac’s 91st birthday, walk with LCK group to Lupine Road birth house for readings. The walk will start and end at Centralville Social Club (364 W. 6th St.) parking lot by the prominent Ace Hardware sign on Lakeview Ave., Centralville neighborhood.

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Reading of Visions of Gerard
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack St.
Tour of “Jack’s Library” followed by selected readings and discussion of Visions of Gerard on the 50th anniversary of its publication. This is Kerouac’s possibly most spiritual book as he remembers his childhood years and the deep impacts of his brother Gerard’s death. Sponsored by UMassLowell and Pollard Memorial Library. Funded in part by the Massachusetts Council on the Humanities.

Thanks to Welles Emporium, the Pollard Memorial Library, the White Eagle Pub, the Old Worthen Tavern, Lowell Telecommunications, and the St. Louis de France School for hosting our events.

I also learned via LCK that the Northport Historical Society is hosting a birthday celebration for Kerouac:

Writer/Playwright, Pat Fenton will be reading from his play “Jack’s Last Call, Say Goodbye to Kerouac”, as part of the March is Kerouac Month at the Northport Historical Society. Mr. Fenton will also discuss Kerouac’s Northport years as well as his importance to American literature.

It’s the end of summer in 1964. A major cultural shift is starting to happen in the U.S., and on his last night in Northport, Long Island the America Jack Kerouac saw through a rear view mirror riding along side his “On the Road” partner Neal Cassady is slowly playing again in his mind.

Long after a small going away party that he has thrown for himself is over; Jack keeps on drinking as he prepares to move to Florida with his mother. He reflects back on his fame, his youth as a football star in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the worry that his time has come and gone. As he sums up parts of his life to the audience in a bittersweet narrative, he receives a series of soul-searching phone calls from his daughter Jan.

An obligatory stop at Gunther’s Bar down the block on Main Street, where Jack Kerouac spent much of his Northport Years, will be made by the writer, and the conversation will continue over pints of tap beer.

The birthday celebration will take place on Sunday, March 10th at 3 P.M., at the Northport Historical Society, 215 Main Street, Northport, Long Island.

The Laughing Goat, a coffeehouse and performance space in Colorado, is hosting a poetry reading on March 11:

”So, You’re a Poet,” presents Jack Kerouac’s 91st Birthday Reading & On the Road film screening: The ”So, You’re a Poet” reading series by Boulder’s ”beat book shop” has several Kerouac events on its poetry calendar. Poets who have performed in this venerable, decades-old series include the late Allen Ginsberg, Bernadette Mayer (who will be in Boulder this summer for the Summer Writing Program), Diane di Prima, Janine Pommy Vega, Anselm Hollo, and many more. The series has always been hosted by poet and Kerouac School alumnus Tom Peters, owner of the Pearl Street landmark ”beat book shop.” The series was hosted for many years by the famous Penny Lane Cafe. In the introduction to Poems from Penny Lane Anne Waldman writes ”One thinks of the legendary Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich where the Dadaist movement was born, or the cafes and bars in San Francisco which spawned the Beat Literary Movement, also the cafe Metro and the Nuyorican Cafe, both in New York City’s East Village.” The series currently takes place in the new Laughing Goat Coffeehouse, which has strong ties to the original Penny Lane. Amiri Baraka, Miguel Algarin, Lewis MacAdams, and other poets read there during last year’s Summer Writing Program. The Laughing Goat is surely a Boulder literary institution in the making.

Are there any other Kerouac birthday celebrations we should know about?

How will you be celebrating? If you can’t make it to one of the events, maybe you could write a poem or read a passage from one of Kerouac’s books or stop by the Beat Museum in San Francisco.

 

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New Year’s Eve with Jack Kerouac

1 Jan

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“The parties were enormous; there were at least a hundred people at Herb Benjamin’s basement apartment in the west nineties. People overflowed into the cellar compartments near the furnace. Something was gong on in every corner, on every bed and couch, not an orgy, but just a New Year’s party with frantic screaming and wild radio music.”

You can read the whole story beginning with Neal Cassady driving Jack Kerouac’s mom back to New York for New Year’s Eve, on page 225 of On the Road: The Original Scroll, published by Penguin Books in 2008.

The recent film adaptation of On the Road does a splendid job capturing the energy at the New Year’s Eve party. Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” the book I’m coauthoring with Paul Maher Jr., tells the true-life events that inspired this story.

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Christmas with Jack Kerouac

24 Dec

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I spotted this festive train outside the National Streetcar Museum when I was in Jack Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Mass., earlier this month.

Looking for a Kerouac-related Christmas story? Here’s a snippet from the scroll version of On the Road in which Kerouac describes his Christmas:

“At Christmas 1948 my mother and I went down to visit my sister in the South laden with presents. I had been writing to Neal and he said he was coming East again; and I told him if so he would fine me in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, between Xmas and New Year. One day when all our Southern relatives were sitting around the parlor in Rocky Mount, gaunt men and women with the old southern soil in their eyes talking in low whining voicss about the weather, the crops and the general weary recapitulations of who had a baby, who got a new house and so on, a mud spattered ’49 Hudson drew up in front off the house on the dirt road….”

You can read the whole story beginning on page 212 of On the Road: The Original Scroll, published by Penguin Books in 2008.

 

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List of Reviews of “On the Road”

19 Dec

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[official film still from On the Road]

Yesterday, I posted my review of the On the Road film adaptation. As LeVar Burton used to say on Reading Rainbow, “But you don’t have to take my word for it.” Here are some other reviews of the film On the Road:

The Beat Museum: “Everyone knows a  book is not a movie and a movie is not a book.  The genius of Jack’ Kerouac’s novels is his prose. It’s not the story, it’s not even the relationships, it’s the prose with the language that he uses to sketch the scene to move the story and to describe the relationships.”

Buzz Sugar: “The plot at times drags, but there is so much energy in the production that I didn’t mind. … This is the role Sam Riley has been waiting for — he’s talented and looks great on screen.”

The Film Pilgrim: “Where Salles really shines is the party/drug scenes, capturing the beatnik life style beautifully.”

Film School Rejects: “For a tale which so obviously values hedonism and free expression, On The Road is ultimately joyless and unengaging, and for a self-discovering road movie to fudge the journey so much and lose almost all lasting meaning is downright criminal.”
The Guardian: “The film is stiflingly reverent towards its source material, and indeed towards itself. It’s good-looking and handsomely produced, but directionless and self-adoring, richly furnished but at the same time weirdly empty, bathed in an elegiac sunset glow of male adoration.”
Hollywood.com: “Incorporating more of Kerouac’s writing as voice-overs or something similar would have given it more life, the kind of vivacity Kerouac sought out in spades, which is why he tolerated Dean’s vagaries for so long. More than most movies, it feels like On the Road could have gone in any direction, expanding or reducing characters, shortening the trips to concentrate on the characters more, emphasizing the effects of their missing fathers or not, and it’s this wishy-washiness that undermines the movie.”
The Hollywood News: “Visually, Salles’ ON THE ROAD is a thing of beauty. Eric Gautier’s cinematography is a wonder to behold: the colouring, the tracking of the characters, and the close quarters filming take the audience to Denver, New York and San Francisco like never before. The images conjured by Kerouac’s words come to life in a way never thought possible. But whilst it looks ravishing the film is full of problems, the first of which is a glaring problem: Hedlund is not Dean Moriarty.”
The Hollywood Reporter: “A beautiful and respectful adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s landmark novel that intermittently leaves the ground to take flight.”
Honi Soit: “Too often unnecessary scenes were included while others were not given the time to become poignant, such as Moriarty’s very brief search for his vagrant father in Denver. I’m happy to concede that part of the frenzy is intentional, to replicate the experience of its addled protagonists, but some tighter editing would not have gone astray.”
The Independent: “Walter Salles takes an orthodox approach to Jack Kerouac’s classic text. As with his adaptation of Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, Salles seems as preoccupied with the mundane as he is with the tales of threesomes, drugs and broken friendships.”
Indiewire: “The atmosphere of his travels comes first, establishing the book’s searching nature ahead of its loose plot. From that early point, “On the Road” adopts a serious, low-key approach to establishing Sal’s world that keeps the characters grounded.”

LitKicks: “Jack Kerouac would have loved this film version of On The Road.”

Movie News: “As a work of narrative semi-fiction, Salles’ version of Kerouac’s book is appropriately graceful, dirty, and enigmatic. He’s a sensitive director and a good storyteller. What doesn’t come across, though, is why the story matters. Who are these Beatniks?”

The NewStatesman: “Once the beats’ credo of philosophy and pharmaceuticals is established, the film starts noticing those people exasperated or excluded by the party. Sal and Dean may be kings of the road behind their scratched windscreen, but Salles is meticulous in balancing the ledger. There is no liberation in the film without suffering, no beat generation without its beaten-down counterpart (usually female).”

The New Yorker: “I found Garrett Hedlund’s teen-idol depiction of Dean Moriarty particularly unsatisfying. … Hedlund’s performance neuters the book’s animating Mephistophelian spirit.”
The New York Times: “The cinematographer Eric Gautier has done brilliant work elsewhere and doesn’t seem capable of taking a bad shot. But everything tends to look too pretty here — the scenery, sets and costumes included, especially for the rougher byways and more perilous interludes, like the Benzedrine nights that feel more opiated than hopped up.”
NPR: “In fact, any film in which all the characters seem utterly convinced of their own importance and coolness from the outset has the same battle. … There is the Ginsberg-like Carlo (Tom Sturridge), a character drawn here as so self-consciously writer-like that his every appearance inspires twitches. He actually says at one point, while pondering how to describe his feelings, ‘Melancholy’s too languorous!'”
Ropes of Silicon: “The tedious result of this adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s famed novel is, however, unfortunate considering Eric Gautier’s rich, smoke-filled cinematography, Walter Salles’s direction and stand-out performances from most of the cast.”
The Telegraph: “Despite its pretty cast and sun-ripened colours, the film quickly settles into a tedious looping rhythm of Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) experiencing some kind of beatnik debauchery with co-wanderers Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) and Marylou (Kristen Stewart), before retiring to a shady corner and scribbling wildly in a notebook.”
Time Out London: “Freewheeling spontaneity is tough to convey on screen, and the drink- and drug-fuelled carousing lacks Danny Boyle-style zing. But the bull-nosed cars, jazz soundtrack and soft light of a bygone era are a joy.”
Total Film: “Even if the film has a patchwork quality, Rivera’s script mines some much-needed humour from events – from Stewart giving new meaning to the phrase ‘two-hander’ to the priceless scene where Dean drives Sal’s mother back to New York.”
Variety: “Yet despite the high level of craft here, it’s an inadequate substitute for the thrilling, sustaining intelligence of Kerouac’s voice. Admittedly, any definitive adaptation would have to adopt a radically avant-garde approach to approximate the galvanic impact Kerouac’s novel had on literary form. But even audiences content with an easy-listening version may be put off by the weak conception of Sal’s inner life.”

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