Collected Letters, 1944-1967

“Dave Moore's work on this collection is simply awesome....  It should become and remain the definitive reference book for Beat scholars forever.” —Carolyn Cassady

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.

Neal Cassady (1926–1968) was born on the side of the road in Salt Lake City and raised in Denver by an alcoholic father. On a trip to New York City in 1946, he encountered Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg on the campus of Columbia University, a meeting many consider the beginning of the Beat movement.