Before we continue our exploration of the work of Jack Kerouac, we're taking a brief detour to consider the work of On the Road's hero and inspiration, Neal Cassady. Unlike his Beat Generation friends, Cassady didn't leave behind a prolific body of writings, but his literary legacy is preserved (in addition to a number of letters) in the form of an unfinished autobiography, The First Third.
Written between 1948 and 1954, much of The First Third was written contemporaneously with the events Kerouac describes in On the Road (which roughly covers the span of 1947-1950), however his focus isn't current events, but rather his youth, his nascent life of crime and adventures, poverty and social shame, that shapes the character that we see in Kerouac's work (and elsewhere, as we'll see).
As for the rest of Cassady's life, post-On the Road, there are two major events that shape his fate. First, in 1958 he was arrested on drug charges (he offered undercover cops a few joints in return for a ride to his work), and served two years in San Quentin — and in later years, he'd blame this on the greater notoriety he received as the real-life hero of Kerouac's bestseller (he also resented the fact that Kerouac was relatively well-to-do from his fictionalizing of Cassady's life while he struggled to make ends meet). While he'd stay in touch with his Beat confreres (particular Allen Ginsberg and the affiliated scene of San Francisco-based poets) he'd spend most of the remainder of his life (from 1964 to 1968) as part of psychedelic proselytizer Ken Kesey's group, the Merry Pranksters, as documented in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.
In terms of scheduling, we're going to spend just one day on The First Third, which is a bit of reading, but just about enough time for discussion. As an unfinished book, and a non-fiction document, we'll read this a little differently than Kerouac, with our focus on a few key elements: 1) the form itself, and how this style relates to Kerouac's, and 2) the details of Neal's life, specifically how they shape him into the character that he becomes (literally and metaphorically) as well as how these self-determined descriptions differ from how Dean Moriarty's history is depicted in On the Road. If Kerouac is seeking a modicum of self-actualization through his writing, how does Cassady do the same?
That having been said, you don't need to read everything presented here. Read the Prologue and at least the first two chapters if you can't read all three, and you might want to check out the letters to Kerouac in the back (and take note that Luanne [Henderson] is OTR's Marylou). And though this is a lot of reading for one class, our reading for next week (The Subterraneans) will be a lot lighter.
Here are a pair of rare videos of Ginsberg and Cassady together at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore towards the end of his life:
In terms of scheduling, we're going to spend just one day on The First Third, which is a bit of reading, but just about enough time for discussion. As an unfinished book, and a non-fiction document, we'll read this a little differently than Kerouac, with our focus on a few key elements: 1) the form itself, and how this style relates to Kerouac's, and 2) the details of Neal's life, specifically how they shape him into the character that he becomes (literally and metaphorically) as well as how these self-determined descriptions differ from how Dean Moriarty's history is depicted in On the Road. If Kerouac is seeking a modicum of self-actualization through his writing, how does Cassady do the same?
That having been said, you don't need to read everything presented here. Read the Prologue and at least the first two chapters if you can't read all three, and you might want to check out the letters to Kerouac in the back (and take note that Luanne [Henderson] is OTR's Marylou). And though this is a lot of reading for one class, our reading for next week (The Subterraneans) will be a lot lighter.
Here are a pair of rare videos of Ginsberg and Cassady together at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore towards the end of his life:
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