Neal Cassady
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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 as the inspiration for the character of Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac classic On The Road..
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 in 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 for a short time and traveled cross-country with Kerouac later. Cassady proved to be the catalyst for the Beat Movement, appearing as the hero Dean Moriarity 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...").
In the late 1950's, Cassady settled down, married Carolyn Cassady, and went to work for the railroad. While he kept in touch with his Beat counterparts, they drifted apart philosophically. In 1964, Cassady met up with Ken Kesey, becoming part of the Merry Pranksters and serving as the crazed driver of the bus named Furthur, which was soon after immortalized in Tom Wolfe's novel, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He later played a prominent role in the California psychedelic scene of the 1960s.
After a party in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico in 1968 he went walking by a railroad track to reach the next town, but passed out in the cold and rainy night wearing nothing but a T-shirt and his jeans. In the morning he was found in a coma by the track and brought to the closest hospital, where he died a few hours later. Kesey retells the story of his death in a short story named The Day After Superman Died (in his collected short stories published as Demon Box) where Cassady is quoted with mumbling the number of nails (sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight, 64928) in the rail he'd counted so far, as his last words before dying.
Cassady never earned anything for his role in the Beat Movement, but his autobiography The First Third was published posthumonously.
The film "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (1997) is based on a letter written by Cassady to Jack Kerouac. The film was directed by Stephen Kay and it starred Thomas Jane as Cassady. The cast also included Adrien Brody, Gretchen Mol, Claire Forlani and Keanu Reeves.
External links
- Neal Cassady (http://www.litkicks.com/BeatPages/page.jsp?what=NealCassady) at Literary Kicks
- Cassady Pages (http://www.zipcon.com/~tkc) at Art and Leisure
- "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119502/) at Internet Movie Databasede:Neal Cassady