11 Things: Neal Cassady
Tim Sullivan
Thursday, February 7, 2008

Neal Cassady was many people to many people.
He was Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's "On the
Road," the secret hero in Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"
and the driver of Ken Kesey's bus. He was also
John Allen Cassady's father. Following are 11
Things John wanted to relate about his dad.

1. Contrary to popular myth regarding his
reputation, my father did, indeed, have a family,
and he strove to be a good husband, father and
provider.

2. When the Merry Pranksters went on the famous
bus trip to New York, my mother (having no sense
of humor) insisted I go to school instead. She rightly
asked Neal not to glorify that lifestyle every time
he came by.

3. My father's mind was highly evolved, but he never
bragged or put others down.

4. They never intended to create the beat generation,
hippies or the anti-war movement, but I'm glad for the
seeds they planted.

5. No matter how much the Eisenhower and McCarthy
eras were oppressive, that period was a day at the beach
compared with what's going on now.

6. When Dad and Kesey rescued me and my sister from
high school to go see the Grateful Dead, they were in the
principal's office in white jump-suits, crazy hats and Day-Glo
orange Beatle boots. The principal said, "This man claims
to be your father!" We said, "Hey, what's up, Dad?" After
some signatures, they let us go (and it was the best Friday ever).

7. These bikers were about to lower the boom on some
kid for God knows what, and Dad jumped into the fray, saying,
"Here, have some gum!" All the bikers backed off, astonished.
"Here, have some gum," he kept saying in the middle of the circle
until the situation was defused. Kesey just watched in amazement.

8. I was sitting across from Ginsberg in our home around 1965.
He said, "Johnny, do you want to know a secret? The Beatles smoke
pot!" I said, "What's pot?" I'll never forget how crestfallen Ginsberg
looked when the scoop of the century was lost on me.

9. He named me after Kerouac and Ginsberg, but, at the last
minute, he changed "Jack" to "John." Years later, I asked Mom about
this. She said, "I asked him about that at the time, and he said, 'Well,
if you say it fast, it sounds like JackAssady and no one is going to
call my son a jackass all his life!' "

10. Of all the doors my father has opened to me, I would trade
them all to have him back.

11. John Allen Cassady and his sister Jami will be attending
the Third Annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash this weekend.
10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sat.-Sun. The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, S.F.
(415) 399-9626. www.thebeatmuseum.org.

Heart Beat (1979)
Director: John Byrum


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Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide

A minor (low budget) gem, with Nolte ambling ruefully through twenty years of the
American Dream as Neal Cassady, the superman-hero-hobo-lover of Jack Kerouac's
On the Road. Based on the autobiography of Carolyn Cassady (who is played with
calm brilliance by Spacek), the movie centres on her triangular life with two men,
warily sidestepping the hype and narcissism of Beat mythology and the parallel
temptation to indulge in an essay on Literary Genius. Instead, out of an episodic
narrative emerges a quiet contemplation of the vast spaces and suburban dreams
of the postwar period, a glowingly designed, occasionally tacky epic of America
from the Bomb to the Pill.

RON WHITEHEAD, ROBERT M. ZOSCHKE —-
“THE” BOOK, the Voices, the Movement, the Never-Ending HeartBEAT

Reflections upon the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD. Edited by Ron Whitehead and Robert M. Zoschke. Published in Heaven Books. Louisville, Kentucky, 2007 175 pp, Illustrated, $25 The book is available here( http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/ron-whitehead-robert-m-zoschke-reflections-upon-the-50th-anniversary-of-jack-kerouac’s-on-the-road/)

My contention: The Beat never stopped with the death of Kerouac. Jack left the American road a little early, hit the dead-end waiting for us all, but left the roadmap in book after book, poem after poem, word after word humming down the centerline of every highway leading us on.

You can’t NOT get lost. LOST is the way.

What Kerouac may have never seen in the distance is just how long the road was, just how far many continue to follow it all over America, all over the world.

This one fine book by Ron Whitehead, Leader of the SOUTHERN BEAT BRANCH (Kentucky) world-class performer-poet of substance, sass, sagacity and co-editor, Robert M. Zoschke, wise/true-talkin’ poet with hard and fast lines on Chicago streets and Northern climes, is testament to Time’s tick-tock Beat, Kerouac’s to be-continued connections…essays. photos, artwork, stories and poems. 46 contributors, each with his/her own roadmap to the journey within. With the Ghost of Jack holding a candle to the dark…to get here from there, THIS way…

For openers, venerable Ferlinghetti (High Priest to a life writ to move, follow your own directions) is on the front cover—a picture-poem to Neal & Jack; the back cover, by veteran chronicler of the Beat, Christopher Felver. filmmaker and photographer.

Inside, cover to cover…Anne Waldman, t. kilgore splake, Jerry Kamstra, Carolyn Cassidy, Michael Madsen, Davis Amram, Gerald Nicosia, Frank Messina…to name but a few of the Beat persuasion, who know the words, the way, and the music…

Here’s a little taste of the book, starting with Ron Whitehead, who captures the essence of the Beat goes on…and ending with an excerpt from Rob Zoschke’s piece…how we got to where we are…Norbert Blei

Norb Blei discusses Reflections upon the 50th anniversary…Jack Kerouac’s On the Road with the book’s editors Ron Whitehead and Rob Zoschke. Just click on the image to the left to listen to it, or just here…

Cassady Day
by Levi Asher February 4, 2008 1:35 am

Neal Cassady, the real-life model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On The Road, died forty years ago today,
on February 4, 1968. There was recently much celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of On The Road,
and it provides a sad perspective to put these anniversaries together and realize that On The Road gave Neal Cassady
exactly one decade of literary "fame" before he died at the age of 42.

This anniversary seemed like a good occasion for me to email Carolyn Cassady a few wide-ranging questions,
which she was kind enough to answer from her home in London:

Levi: So much has changed in the world since February 4th, 1968. Or has it? If Neal has been looking down on us all for
all these years, what do you think he would say about the state of the world in 2008?

Carolyn: If Neal were watching us since the time he departed this planet, I think he would feel as I do that it is in a very sad state. He was such a loving person, and there is so little evidence of that in the affairs of the world. Acquiring money and/or power at any cost appears to be the religion and goal. Every time there's an "improvement" in products, they're much worse. Selfishness.

Levi: I know that you and Neal were interested together in the teachings of spiritual leader Edgar Cayce (by the way, I had a piano teacher as a kid who was a Caycean, so I know a little about it). Have you remained involved with this movement, and what do you think about it today?

Carolyn:Neal and I used the Cayce connection as the springboard for further studies in occult lore. We didn't continue after the first few years with just that. We explored all the scriptures from early Eastern systems, the Theosophists, Max Heindel, etc etc., and I became interested in Astrology. I am poor at interpretation, but I get a little. Otherwise, the teachings of that accumulated search and the present-day Truth movements, like Unity satisfy my needs nicely, and I try to live by the wisdom of the ages as best I can.

Levi: How do you feel about today's literature? What books have you recently enjoyed reading, and are there any newer writers you like, or any newer or older writers you can't stand?

Carolyn: I'm not an authority on today's literature. I read very few novels; I like biographies, documentaries and maybe historical novels. I have read more English writers since moving here, and I havaen't read any more American ones. I have enjoyed Julian Barnes, Jude Morgan, Roddy Doyle, Peter Ackroyd to name a few. I do read reviews in literary magazines so remain interested in trends.

Levi: Can you think of any surprising truth or fact about Neal Cassady (or about the times you spent with Neal and Jack Kerouac and the rest of the gang) that the world does not yet know?

Carolyn: My dear, my book is full of surprising truths about the lads, but not enough people read it or read it carefully. So there are still masses of myths and misinformation everywhere.

Levi: Is the date of February 4, 2008 going to be an especially significant one for you and your children? And do you have any thoughts you'd like to share on this 40th anniversary?

Carolyn: I remember February 4 with affection both for Neal and for Anne Murphy, who's birthday it is. I understand the Beat Museum in San Francisco is celebrating Neal's birthday on the 8th, but I am not included in that in any way -- except Neal's children will be there. I always think of Neal with gratitude for teaching me so much wisdom about life; I feel privileged to have known him, and I miss him always. He was a unique individual in spades.


* * * * *

O C T O B E R 1 9 5 7

A review of Jack Kerouac's On the Road

by Phoebe Lou Adams

JACK KEROUAC'S second novel, On the Road (Viking, $3.95), concerns the adventures of the narrator,
Sal Paradise, a war veteran who is studying on the G.I. bill and writing a book between drinks, and his
younger friend, Dean Moriarty late of reform school. Neither of these boys can sit still. They race back
and forth from New York to San Francisco, they charge from one party to another, they tour jazz joints,
and Dean complicates the pattern by continually getting married. At odd moments they devote a little
thought to finding Dean's father, a confirmed drunk who is presumably bumming around somewhere
west of the Mississippi.

Dean is the more important character. Mr. Kerouac makes considerable play with his disorderly childhood,
his hitch in the reform school, and his rootlessness, but his activities seem less a search for stability than
a determined pursuit of euphoria. Dope, liquor, girls, jazz, and fast cars, in that order, are Dean's ladder
to nirvana, and so much time is spent on them that it is hard to keep track of any larger pattern behind
all the scuttling about.

The trouble is a matter of repetition. Everything Mr. Kerouac has to tell about Dean has been told in the
first third of the book, and what comes later is a series of variations on the same theme. It's a good theme --
the inability of a young man of enormous energy, considerable intelligence, and a kind of muddled talent
for absorbing experience to find any congenial place for himself in organized society -- but the variations
are all so much alike that they begin to cancel each other out.


Return to Flashback: Kerouac and the Beats.
However, the novel contains a great deal of excellent writing. Mr. Kerouac has a distinctive style, part
severe simplicity, part hep-cat jargon, part baroque fireworks. He uses each of these elements with a sure
touch, works innumerable combinations and contrasts with them, and never slackens the speed of his narrative,
which proceeds, like Dean at the wheel, at a steady hundred and ten miles an hour.

The book is most readable. It disappoints because it constantly promises a revelation or a conclusion of real
importance and general applicability, and cannot deliver any such conclusion because Dean is more convincing
as an eccentric than as a representative of any segment of humanity.

Copyright © 1957 by Phoebe Lou Adams. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; October 1957; Ladder to Nirvana; Volume 200, No. 4; pages 178 - 180.