Neal Cassady, left, with Jack Kerouac, photograph by Carolyn Cassady.

Neal Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was an icon of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s, perhaps best known for being characterized as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's classic On the Road. Slashdot, often abbreviated as /.[1], is a science, science fiction, and technology-related news website owned by SourceForge, Inc. ... Image File history File links The First Third by Neal Cassady. ... Image File history File links The First Third by Neal Cassady. ... is the 39th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 35th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Beats redirects here. ... Dean Moriarty is a character in Jack Kerouacs 1957 novel On The Road, the fictionalized version of writer/Beat Generation icon Neal Cassady. ... Jack Kerouac (pronounced ) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. ... This article is about the novel On the Road. ...

Biography

Born in Salt Lake City and raised by an alcoholic father in Denver, Cassady spent much of his youth bouncing between skid-row hotels with his father and reform schools for car theft. In 1946 Cassady met Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg at Columbia University in New York and quickly became friends with them and the circle of artists and writers there. He had a sexual relationship with Ginsberg that lasted off and on for the next twenty years, and he later traveled cross-country with Kerouac. For ships of the United States Navy of the same name, see USS Salt Lake City. ... Denver redirects here. ... A reform school in the United States was a term used to define, often somewhat euphemistically, what was often essentially a penal institution for boys, generally teenagers. ... Irwin Allen Ginsberg (IPA: ) (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet. ... Alma Mater Columbia University is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ...

Cassady proved to be the catalyst for the Beat Movement, appearing as the characters Dean Moriarty and Cody Pomeray in many of Kerouac's novels. Ginsberg mentioned him as well in his ground-breaking poem, Howl ("N.C., secret hero of these poems..."). Additionally, he is commonly credited for helping Kerouac break ties with his Thomas Wolfe-inspired sentimental style and discover his own unique voice through "spontaneous prose", a stream of consciousness approach to writing. Howl and Other Poems was published in the fall of 1956 as number four in the Pocket Poets Series from City Lights Books This article is about the poem by Allen Ginsberg. ... Photo by Carl Van Vechten For the contemporary author and journalist, see Tom Wolfe Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938) was an important American novelist of the 20th century. ... In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a literary technique that seeks to portray an individuals point of view by giving the written equivalent of the characters thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her sensory reactions to external occurrences. ...

After a brief marriage to the teenage LuAnne Henderson, Cassady married Carolyn Robinson in 1948. The couple eventually had three children and settled down in a Monte Sereno ranch house, 50 miles south of San Francisco, California, where Kerouac and Ginsberg sometimes visited. Cassady worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad and kept in touch with his Beat counterparts even as they drifted apart philosophically. Carolyn Cassady, American writer and Beat Generation personality, was born Carolyn Robinson in Lansing, Michigan on April, 28 1923 and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. ... Monte Sereno is a city in Santa Clara County, California, USA. The population was 3,483 at the 2000 census. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... The Southern Pacific Railroad (AAR reporting marks SP) was an American railroad. ...

Following a 1958 arrest for offering to share a small amount of marijuana with an undercover agent at a San Francisco night club, Cassady served a difficult prison sentence at San Quentin. After his release in June, 1960 he struggled to meet family obligations, and Carolyn divorced him when his parole period expired in 1963. Cassady first met Ken Kesey during the summer of 1962, eventually becoming one of the Merry Pranksters. In 1964 he served as the driver of the bus Furthur, which was immortalized in Tom Wolfe's book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He later played a prominent role in the explosive California psychedelic scene of the 1960s. Cannabis, also known as marijuana[1] or ganja (Hindi: गांजा),[2] is a psychoactive product of the plant Cannabis sativa. ... Categories: Buildings and structures stubs | US geography stubs | Prisons in California ... Kenneth Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American author, best known for his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and as a counter-cultural figure who, some consider, was a link between the beat generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Inside the bus, psychedelic and trippy paintings Furthur was a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964, for $1,250 from Andre Hobson in Atherton, California. ... Tom Wolfe gives a speech at the White House. ... The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a literary journalism novel written by Tom Wolfe early in his career in 1968. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969. ...

Cassady makes an appearance in Hunter S. Thompson's book Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, in which he is described as "the worldly inspiration for the protagonist of two recent novels," drunkenly yelling at police at the famed Hells Angels parties at Ken Kesey's residence in La Honda, an event also chronicled in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Although his name was removed at the insistence of Thompson's publisher, the description is clearly a reference to Cassady's appearances in Jack Kerouac's works, On the Road and Visions of Cody. His name appears explicitly in the 50th anniversary edition of the original scroll of On the Road (On the Road - the original scroll, Viking 2007). Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. ... This article is about the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. ... Categories: US geography stubs | Towns in California ... This article is about the novel On the Road. ... Categories: Literature stubs | Novels of Jack Kerouac ... This article is about the novel On the Road. ...

In January, 1967 Cassady traveled to Mexico with fellow prankster George "Barely Visible" Walker and longtime girlfriend Anne Murphy. Holding court at a beachside house just south of Puerto Vallarta, they were joined by Berkeley folk Barbara Wilson and Walter Cox. All-night storytelling, speed runs in George's psychedelic Lotus Elan and plenty of LSD for everyone made for a classic Cassady performance – "like a trained bear," Carolyn Cassady once said. At one point Cassady took Cox, then 19, aside and told him, "Twenty years of fast living – there's just not much left, and my kids are all screwed up. Don't do what I have done." Puerto Vallarta is a Mexican resort city situated on the Pacific Oceans Bahía de Banderas. ... Lotus Elan is the name of two convertible automobiles and one fixed head coupé produced by Lotus Cars. ... Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly called LSD, LSD-25, or acid. ...

During the next year, Cassady's life became increasingly peripatetic. He left Mexico in May, traveling to San Francisco, Denver, New York and points in between; then went back to Mexico in September and October (stopping in San Antonio on the way to visit his oldest daughter who had just given birth to his first grandchild); visited Kesey's Oregon farm in December; and spent New Year's with Carolyn at a friend's house near San Francisco. Finally, in late January, 1968, Cassady returned to Mexico once again.

On Saturday, February 3, 1968, Cassady attended a wedding party in San Miguel de Allende. After the party he went walking along a railroad track to reach the next town, but passed out in the cold and rainy night wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans. In the morning, he was found in a coma by the track and taken to the closest hospital, where he died a few hours later on February 4, four days short of his forty-second birthday. Panoramic view of San Miguel de Allende. ... For other uses, see Coma (disambiguation). ...

The exact cause of Cassady's death remains uncertain. Those who attended the wedding party confirm that he took an unknown quantity of Seconol, a powerful barbiturate that can easily lead to overdose. Cassady was not a heavy drinker, though he may have participated in a toast to the bride and groom. The physician who performed the autopsy wrote simply "general congestion in all systems;" when interviewed later he stated that he was unable to give an accurate report, because Cassady was a foreigner and there were drugs involved.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy and Influence

Kesey wrote a fictional account of Cassady's death in a short story named The Day After Superman Died (in his collected short stories published as Demon Box), where Cassady is quoted mumbling the number of ties he had counted on the railroad line (sixty-four thousand nine-hundred and twenty-eight) as his last words before dying. This article is in need of attention. ...

Cassady lived briefly with the Grateful Dead and is immortalized in the Dead song "The Other One" as the bus driver "Cowboy Neal." ^[1]. ^[2] A later version of the same tune, "That's It For the Other One," includes specific references to Cassady's death. A third Grateful Dead song, "Cassidy," might seem to be a misspelling of Cassady's name; in fact the song primarily celebrates the 1970 birth of baby girl Cassidy Law into the Grateful Dead family, though the lyrics also include references to Neal Cassady himself. This article is about the band. ...

The film The Last Time I Committed Suicide, released in 1997, is based on the "Joan Anderson letter" written by Cassady to Jack Kerouac in December, 1950. Although much of this letter had been lost, a surviving remnant was originally published in an early 1964 edition of John Bryan's magazine, "Notes From Underground". The film The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997) is based on a letter written by Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac. ...

An upcoming film, Luz Del Mundo, will deal with Cassady's friendship and adventures with Jack Kerouac. Cassady will be played by Austin Nichols and Kerouac will be played by Will Estes. Austin Nichols (born April 24, 1980) is an American actor. ... Will Estes (born William Estes Nipper, October 21, 1978, Los Angeles, California) is an American actor best known for his role as JJ Pryor, on the NBC drama American Dreams. ...

Another film, the biopic Neal Cassady, is slated for a 2007 release. This film will focus more on the Prankster years and stars Tate Donovan as Neal, Chris Bauer as Kesey, and Glenn Fitzgerald as Kerouac. Noah Buschel wrote and directed the film. The soundtrack to the movie includes Johnny Horton, Thelonious Monk, Pharoah Sanders, and Don Cherry. In previews the Cassady family has criticized this film as highly inaccurate. ^[3] A biographical film or biopic is a film about a particular person or group of people, based on events that actually happened. ... Tate Buckley Donovan (born September 25, 1963) is an American film and television actor and director. ... Mark Christopher Bauer (born October 28, 1966) is an American film and television actor. ... Glenn Fitzgerald, who is notable for playing the character of Sean in The Sixth Sense, has had over 30 roles in movies or television series. ... Noah Buschel was born May 31, 1978. ... Johnny Horton (April 30, 1925 – November 4, 1960) was an American country music singer who was most famous for his semi-folk, so-called saga songs. With them, he had several major crossover hits, most notably in 1959 with The Battle of New Orleans which won the 1960 Grammy Award... Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was a jazz pianist and composer. ... Reggie Workman, Pharoah Sanders, and Idris Muhammad, c. ... Don Cherry (November 18, 1936–October 19, 1995) was an innovative jazz trumpeter probably best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. ...

Cassady's autobiography The First Third was published posthumously. His complete surviving letters are published in "Grace Beats Karma: Letters from Prison" (Blast, 1993) and "Neal Cassady: Collected Letters, 1944-1967" (Penguin, 2007)

Bibliography

• Selected works in Genesis West volume seven published in the Winter of 1965 by Gordon Lish
• The First Third (City Lights, 1971. Expanded version, 1981)
• Grace Beats Karma: Letters from Prison (Blast, 1993)
• Neal Cassady: Collected Letters, 1944-1967 (Penguin, 2004)

Frances Fokes and Gordon Lish found an avant garde literary magazine titled Genesis West, which ran from 1961 to 1964. ... Gordon Jay Lish (born February 11, 1934 in Hewlett, New York) is an American writer. ...

Published Biographies

• The Holy Goof: A Biography of Neal Cassady, by William Plummer (1981)
• Neal Cassady, Volume One, 1926-1940, by Tom Christopher (1995)
• Neal Cassady, Volume Two, 1941-1946, by Tom Christopher (1998)
• Neal Cassady: The Fast Life of a Beat Hero, by David Sandison & Graham Vickers (2006)
• Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg, by Carolyn Cassady (Original version-Penguin, 1990, first revision-Black Spring Press, Amazon.co.uk - sole distributor, 2007)

Carolyn Cassady, American writer and Beat Generation personality, was born Carolyn Robinson in Lansing, Michigan on April, 28 1923 and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. ...

References

Literary Studies

• Friendly and Flowing Savage: The Literary Legend of Neal Cassady, by Gregory Stephenson (1987). Incorporated in The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation by Gregory Stephenson (1990)

Appearances In Literature

• John Clellon Holmes: Go (1952) as "Hart Kennedy"
• Ginsberg: Howl (1956) as "N.C."
• Kerouac: On the Road (1957) as "Dean Moriarty"; in the fiftieth anniversary edition of the book, he is referred to by his own name.^[4]
• Kerouac: Visions of Cody (1960) as "Cody Pomeray"
• Kerouac: The Dharma Bums (1958) as "Cody Pomeray"
• Kerouac: The Subterraneans (1958) as "Leroy"
• Kerouac: Book of Dreams (1961) as "Cody Pomeray"
• Kerouac: Big Sur (1962) as "Cody Pomeray"
• Kerouac: Desolation Angels (1965) as "Cody Pomeray"
• Hunter S. Thompson: Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)
• Tom Wolfe: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
• Charles Bukowski Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969) as "Kerouac's boy Neal C."
• Alan Harrington: Psychopaths (1972)
• Robert Stone: Dog Soldiers as "Ray Hicks" (1974)
• Ken Kesey: Over the Border as "Houlihan" (1973)
• Ken Kesey: The Day After Superman Died as "Houlihan" (1979)
• Nick Mamatas: Move Under Ground (2004)
• Robert Stone: Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties (2007)

Go is the semi-auto-biographical novel by John Clellon Holmes. ... Howl and Other Poems was published in the fall of 1956 as number four in the Pocket Poets Series from City Lights Books This article is about the poem by Allen Ginsberg. ... This article is about the novel On the Road. ... Categories: Literature stubs | Novels of Jack Kerouac ... The Dharma Bums cover This is an article about the novel by Jack Kerouac. ... The Subterraneans cover The Subterraneans is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. ... Book Of Dreams is the tenth album by American rock band The Steve Miller Band, released in 1977. ... For other uses, see Big Sur (disambiguation). ... Desolation Angels, a 1965 novel by Jack Kerouac. ... The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a literary journalism novel written by Tom Wolfe early in his career in 1968. ... Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a collection of articles written by Charles Bukowski for the Open Press newspaper. ... Antisocial personality disorder (APD) is a personality disorder which is often characterised by antisocial and impulsive behaviour. ... Dog Soldiers is a 1974 novel by American novelist Robert Stone. ... Move Under Ground is a horror novel by Nick Mamatas which combines the Beat style of Jack Kerouac with the cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecrafts Cthulhu Mythos. ...

Appearances In Film

• Neal Cassady (2008) played by Tate Donovan
• Heart Beat (1980) played by Nick Nolte
• What Happened to Kerouac (1986)
• The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997) played by Thomas Jane

The film The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997) is based on a letter written by Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac. ...

See also

• Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)
• Jack Kerouac
• On the Road

Jack Kerouac (pronounced ) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. ... This article is about the novel On the Road. ...

External links

• Neal Cassady Official site of Neal Cassady's estate, updated monthly with stories and photos contributed by the family; Carolyn Cassady, Cathy Cassady Sylvia, Jami Cassady Ratto and John Allen Cassady.
• The Beat Museum houses some of Neal Cassady's belongings, including his referee shirt, worn while driving Furthur with the Merry Pranksters.
• John Allen Cassady Web site of Neal's son John.
• Photos, Neal Cassady Sr. Gravesite
• Denver Colorado, Neal Cassady, and the Beat Generation
• Neal's Denver at Literary Kicks
• Neal Cassady at Literary Kicks
• Cassady Pages at Art and Leisure
• Neal Cassady at rotten.com
• Neal Cassady at IntrepidTrips.com
• The Last Time I Committed Suicide at the Internet Movie Database
• Heart Beat at the Internet Movie Database
• Blue Neon Alley - Neal Cassady directory
• Denver Beat Photo Tour, Cassady Haunts and Homes, More
• A list of recordings relating to Kerouac and Cassady
• A selection of Neal Cassady related book covers

"Subterranean Kerouac" by Ellis Amburn (St. Martin's Press, 1998; p. 301). The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ...