Collected Letters, 1944-1967

Rating:
Summary: Elementary my dear Moriarty.......
Review: >
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Now's your chance.......

Read between the lines of what Jack Kerouac
was saying in On the Road, or at least get closer
to his hero Dean Moriarty (real name Neal Cassady).

This book officially published this winter in the
USA and available on import in the UK is a
CAUSE CELEBRE of the Beat World. Possibly
the best Beat read you'll have had since On the Road.

Neal Cassady's Letters - produced by Carolyn
Cassady and others, brilliantly edited (and that
doesn't mean cut) by Beat authority Dave Moore.

Having read On the Road we think we know it all?
We don't know half of it. Neal's Letters flesh out
the legend. For instance they show the married side
of Neal with intimate letters between himself and
Carolyn, something On the Road barely touches on.
They reveal the extent of the 'manage a trois' which
existed between Neal, Carolyn and Jack.

You want something even spicier? Try the long letter
to Alan Ginsberg starting on p.199 ...or Diana's note
on Neal p.142-143, or Neal's outrageous letter starting
p.327 and you'll see why Neal Cassady joins The
Marquis de Sade, Casanova, and Rasputin as
a sexual enchanter.

Bristolian Dave Moore's meticulous annotation and footnotes
link the letters, explain them, and make a narrative of them.
They prove Neal an engaging writer who's free-form
style inspired Kerouac in his genius to make
a prose-poem of the tale.

It's not difficult to see why Kerouac and his muse have
been down-graded over the years, and even vilified.
There's enough work here for a thousand sociologists.
At a time when, here in Britain, Jamaican men are
being persuaded to change their `out husband' lifestyle
and settle down with their wives and the children they
father, Neal Cassady epitomised the very life style
they're eschewing becoming the `white negro' of
Kerouac's classic, not only in terms of jazz music
and pot, but also adopting the black male role of
sex-object and stud.

No wonder the media wants to play him down - the
man who hitched a train and threw a generation off the rails.

As Joe Strummer said: "When we first read On
the Road we weren't digging Kerouac's prose - we
wanted to be like Dean Moriarty". He ended his life
as only a man like that can - broken and crying on
a railway line in Mexico.

Saint or sinner? Looser or winner? As the man who
straddled 100 women and Kerouac's prose makes
his literary debut - you make up your mind!


Rating:
Summary: Lost Beat Literature
Review: Neal Cassady is better known as the inspiration for the driver/companion Dean Moriarty in "On the Road", Cody in "Visions of Cody" and the real life driver of the next genration in "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". Other than "The First Third" published by City Lights many years ago there is little actually written by this fascinating personality. These letters are give a good idea of the style of speaking, writing and living (good and bad) that touched so many people and crossed between the generations of the beats and the hippies.

Not always inspired, sometimes pedestrian, Cassady's voice is always compelling. This book is essential reading for fan's of the beats and should be on the bookshelf along with the letters of Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg. Fans of Ken Kesey, Ed McClanahan, Larry McMurtry, Gurney Norman, the Grateful Dead, etc. will appreciate this book as well.

It is sad to read how often Cassady talks of writing a new book when you know that he never really get around to doing it but, in a sense, he lived a life which became a part of many books. In that sense, as an inspiration, a many faceted character he is very much a part of literature and this will add deservingly to this recognition.