Collected Letters, 1944-1967
by Neal Cassady
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Book Summary Information
Author: Neal CassadyEditor: Dave Moore
Introduction: Carolyn Cassady
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01-25
ISBN: 0142002178
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Collected Letters, 1944-1967
Book Review: Elementary my dear Moriarty.......
Summary: 5 Stars
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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!
Summary of Collected Letters, 1944-1967
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.Authors Books
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