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Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady
Feb. 4th, 2015 04:33 pm
Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. He was prominently featured as himself in the original "scroll" (first draft) version, and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty, in Jack Kerouac's 1957 version of the novel On the Road. Cassady had a sexual relationship with Allen Ginsberg, whom he met in 1947, which lasted off and on for twenty years, and he traveled cross-country with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions. In On the Road the narrator, Sal Paradise (representing Jack Kerouac) states, "He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him...Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me." Cassady was born to Maude Jean (Scheuer) and Neal Marshall Cassady in Salt Lake City, Utah. His mother died when he was ten, and he was raised by his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado. Cassady spent much of his youth living on the streets of skid row with his father or in reform school.
As a youth, Cassady was repeatedly involved in petty crime. He was arrested for car theft when he was 14, for shoplifting and car theft when he was 15, and for car theft and fencing when he was 16.
In 1941, the 15-year old Cassady met Justin W. Brierly, a prominent Denver educator. Brierly was well known as a mentor of promising young men, and, impressed by Cassady's intelligence, Brierly took an active role in Cassady's life over the next few years. He helped admit Cassady to East High School where he taught, encouraged and supervised his reading, and found employment for him. Cassady continued his criminal activities, however, and was repeatedly arrested from 1942 to 1944; on at least one of these occasions, he was released by law enforcement into Brierly's safekeeping. In June 1944, Cassady was arrested for receipt of stolen property, and served eleven months of a one-year prison sentence. He and Brierly actively exchanged letters during this period even through Cassady's intermittent incarcerations; these represent Cassady's earliest surviving letters. Brierly, apparently a closeted homosexual, is also believed to have been responsible for Cassady's first homosexual experience.
Neal Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. He was prominently featured as himself in the original "scroll" version, and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty, in Jack Kerouac's 1957 version of On the Road. Cassady had a sexual relationship with Allen Ginsberg, whom he met in 1947, which lasted off and on for the 20 years, and he traveled with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions.
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Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady
( Further Readings )
More Real Life Romances at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance
AN INFATUATION, a novella by Joe Cosentino