People of Note: Neal Cassady

One of modern America’s archetypal tragic figures, Neal Cassady was the father of the Beat Generation and the granddaddy of the psychedelic movement. His cross-country travels with the writer Jack Kerouac were the inspiration for On the Road, the manifesto of the Beat legions. Allen Ginsburg also alludes to Cassady in his groundbreaking poem Howl, which is in my opinion one of the greatest American literary achievements.

Cassady was born in 1926 and was raised in Denver by an alcoholic father, bouncing between run-down hotels and reform schools. He met Kerouac and Ginsberg at Columbia University in 1946 and quickly joined their circle of friends, which included several prominent writers and artists.

Over the next year Cassady and Kerouac traveled from New York to Denver to San Francisco several times, also making stops in New Orleans and Mexico. Kerouac’s accounts of these journeys would turn into On the Road, finished in 1951.

Cassady and Kerouac had a falling out towards the end of their travels together when Kerouac developed dysentery in Mexico, and Cassady abandoned him there. Their friendship was irreparably damaged, and they drifted apart.

In 1948 Cassady married Carolyn Robinson and settled down south of San Francisco. They had three children, but Cassady could not escape his roaming past. He was finally arrested in 1958 on drug charges after offering to share marijuana with an undercover officer. He did a brief stint at San Quentin, and upon his release found himself unable to meet the obligations of his wife and children. Carolyn eventually divorced him.

In 1962 Cassady met Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and founder of the Merry Pranksters). He eventually joined Kesey’s group of flower children, which included Wavy Gravy, Tom Wolfe, and Mountain Girl (Carolyn Adams, wife of Jerry Garcia).

The Merry Pranksters were, in essence, the psychedelic movement. They believed psychedelic drugs could be used to transform society and attempted to spread this message through events they labeled “Acid Tests.” During “Acid Tests” participants were given LSD (which was legal until 1966) and asked if they could “pass the acid test.”

Don’t get it? Neither do I, but I imagine that’s a good thing.

Cassady was with the Pranksters until 1967, when he traveled to Mexico with fellow Prankster George “Barely Visible” Walker and girlfriend Anne Murphy. They ended up just south of Puerto Vallarta and held legendary parties at their beachside house. It was following one of these parties that Cassady died, in1968, after passing out near a railroad track on a cold, rainy night wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans. He was in a coma when he was found and later died of exposure. He was five days short of his 42nd birthday.

The tragedy of Neal Cassady is that he represents that small cross section of humanity that is truly alive. He ravenously consumed life, wandering from experience to experience freely, but far from aimlessly. He was driven by the desire to taste, to smell, to hear, to see, to feel, to love, to hate, to live through suffering and ecstasy alike. He dared to bypass the American dream for the chance to truly come alive, and in the end he lost. He became lazy, finding it easier to artificially manifest sublime experiences with drugs and alcohol, never realizing that these were the very things making him numb to life.

Maybe the lesson to take from the life of Neal Cassady is best coined using his own words: “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.”

Thanks for reading.