Collected Letters, 1944-1967
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
“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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
