I think of Neal Cassady. I think of Neal Cassady. I think of Neal Cassady...

Jack Kerouac's sketch map of On the Road travels 1947-48

Those three sentences may have been the final three sentences of the original scroll version of "On the Road," but we'll never know because the last few feet of the scroll were famously "eaten" by Lucien Carr's dog. Well, chewed. Or perhaps merely shredded.

We don't know, and what actually happened to those missing last few feet of the Scroll will be the topic of scholarly and Beat research and debate for generations to come, as are all things Kerouac, all things Cassady, all things Beat, especially as the principals die off and there is no one left to testify and spin yarns and juggle the true facts any more. Comes now: "Scholarship!"

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I mentioned some time back that I missed seeing the original scroll of "On the Road" at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe when it was exhibited there in 2007. I arrived in New Mexico from California on the last day of the exhibit, with plenty of time to get to Santa Fe if I had known about it, but I found out about the exhibit just as the Museum was closing. I was somewhat surprisingly disappointed and saddened that I had missed seeing something so seminal. Whether I will ever have another chance, I don't know. But I've now read the published version of the Original Scroll Version of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," so I don't feel I've missed it entirely.
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The Scroll, as much as anything, is a visualization of the journeys across "the awful continent" that Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady took together and separately and with others during the post-war years between about 1947 and 1951. It was a time of international glory, exhaustion, and partial peace for the United States abroad, and restlessness, reconception and nascent rebellion at home.

Kerouac and Cassady and the other would-be Beats were part of the rebellion, but as we read, the Rebel of the Rebellion was singularly and always Neal Cassady himself.

Neal Cassady on the Streets of San Francisco c. 1955

I've kept some notes, but they are kind of a jumble.

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I've finished reading the original scroll version of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." I took my time. It's taken me several months, in part because I wanted to savor it, and in part because I mostly read it at bedtime, and I don't stay up as late as I used to, so 6 or 10 pages at a time was about all I could handle.

Of course, the book -- no matter which version -- is about Neal Cassady (yclept "Dean Moriarty" in the 1957 published version.) Neal Cassady. Neal Cassady.

The source of the name, "Dean Moriarty,"  is something of a mystery, and yet it fits the time period when the novel was re-written (mid-1950s). Throughout the Scroll Version, the real names of the characters are used. The Scroll Version is rougher, clearer, harder, and harsher. It felt real for the most part, except when Kerouac was obviously trying various literary forms. The reader could tell when the author was affected by substances, and sometimes it seemed possible to determine whether the passage was written under the influence of alcohol, speed, pot, or a combination of two or more... probably not really possible, but maybe...

I found myself catching my breath toward the end of the novel. I didn't want it to end. The Mexican passages seemed hurried just the same. Like Kerouac was tired of the story and wanted it over with.

I only have the vaguest recollection of Neal Cassady, and those are all from Tom Wolfe, "The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test," Timothy Leary (Deary) and the Merry Pranksters. Though I knew that Kerouac wrote about Neal Cassady in "On the Road," his character in "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" was limned, it seemed to me, quite differently, and I didn't quite see a connection between the two.

 

God, how poor they were. I had forgotten, or it never really occurred to me in the first place, that the Beats were broke most of the time, even when they had some money from working odd jobs or their literary efforts or whatever, they were constantly poor and beset by the consequences of their poverty. These were not the proper working and middle and high class sorts that appeared as protagonists in those days. That they were able to travel as often and well as they did, much as the next generation's hippies would do, on practically no money at all, to travel nearly everywhere and fit in with like minded communities on the margins of America is something only the Underclass still knows how to do. In those days, it seemed that everyone could figure it out and if they wanted to, they could do it. Not so much, I think, any more.

When I read "On the Road," sometime in the early 1960s, "Dean Moriarty" was a distinct character, wild and free, an avatar of what was to come as Liberation took hold of the popular imagination, but not -- it seemed to me -- as pure and spiritual as the Neal Cassady in Tom Wolfe's vision. Not the same at all. But maybe he was.

Kerouac wrote about Neal Cassady with a kind of reverence and awe reserved for divine beings, something I had a hard time accommodating when I was a young teenager. The idea that someone -- anyone -- was worthy of worship or near worship bothered me greatly, and given the danger inherent in Being Neal Cassady (let alone being around him), it seemed odd to me that anyone like Kerouac -- who was a remarkable person in his own right -- would find Cassady worthy of this sort of attention. Yet he did.

Neal Cassady may have been a con man, but not necessarily in a bad way -- his cons were mostly of the personal kind and relatively benign as described by Kerouac and by Wolfe. Many people have said he used his charms and skilful conning in order to be taken advantage of, not to take advantage of others. I knew the type only too well later on. They were always on a knife edge of disaster, always seeking -- and generally finding -- some soul to take them in and take advantage of their energy and passion. Kerouac himself did that with Neal, but it was two-way. Neal was taking Jack in and keeping him from whatever peril he might be facing, almost by magic, while taking advantage of his apparent stability. Neal couldn't settle down, ever. He was always figuratively on the road, and as often as he could, he took the road, wandered questing, until the very end.

Kerouac settled in to a stodgy personality type, it seems, even before his lengthy travels with Neal and the rest. The contrast between Jack's settled-ness and Neal's wild-ness was a big part of their bond.

Neal is a classic "addictive type." Drugs are a necessity. Even when he isn't using some combination of substances -- most often marijuana and benzedrine reinforced with alcohol -- he acts as if he is. There is no time when he is not wired except at those rare times when he falls asleep as in the scene in the Mexican jungle when he curls up on the sandy roadside and sleeps while the Mexican policeman checks on him solicitously, "Dormiendo?" Sí, verdad. Dormiendo. But that is one of the very few times Jack portrays Neal as sleeping throughout all their journeys and wild times.

Since we've settled in New Mexico, I haven't done nearly the traveling I once did. I used to make ten to twelve trips back and forth between California and New Mexico every year, and no matter what kind of work I was doing prior to that, it seemed I was on the road constantly -- or I was constantly in an airport getting ready to fly somewhere and then to drive and drive and drive.

When I was little, we moved a lot.

At one point I think I realized with a kind of wonder that I'd attended ten different elementary schools. Not all of that was because we'd moved, though that was often the case, but it was also because of the Baby Boom and the new schools that were being opened all the time; I was typically among students transferred when a new school opened, even without a move.

New Mexico figures in "On the Road" but not the way I thought it might. Notice is taken of the fact that the first atomic bomb was exploded in New Mexico, and that there were places to stop or pass through or have a bite to eat on the road in New Mexico -- but not really much else about the place seems to have made enough of an impression on Jack and Neal to comment upon. Interesting. Part of it is because they often pass through at night, so they see little and interact with residents less. Some of the descriptions of their Mexico travels feel more like New Mexico impressions to me. But then, that's to be expected I guess. I also suspect something I have no proof for. My suspicion is that "Dean Moriarty" is a name conjured from an amalgam of the person James Dean and the place Moriarty, New Mexico -- which would have been a place they passed through on the road, then Route 66, between Albuquerque and Amarillo.

Maybe something happened there, I don't know. Or maybe they just commented on the name as they passed through in the night. It's not in the book whatever it might be...

Hut Sut Rawlson on the Rillerah and a Brawla, Brawla Sooit

For some reason, I always associated this song with Hudson automobiles when I was young, though it has nothing to do with Hudsons, and no one we knew when I was a kid had a Hudson. That seems strange now because Hudsons were highly respected and well-known, and the Post War Hudsons, 1948-54, were some of the wildest-styled scarab beetle autos of the era. Practically every other car brand from those days I remember very well, whether Chevrolet, Plymouth or Ford, or one of the fancier kind like your Packards and Cadillacs and Lincolns and such. There were Studebakers and Nashes among our friends and even an odd jalopy or two, those rattle-trap coupes and broken-down sedans from the 20s and early 30s with wood-spoke wheels and heavy grinding shifters on the slick rubber or metal floorboards. Oh, I remember the cars from those days very well and loved riding in cars, smelling the smell of the cars and tobacco smoke and open air and rubber and exhaust, listening to the radio, probably Fibber McGee and Molly or something, and driving around the countryside.

Jack Kerouac reported in "On the Road" that Neal Cassady made a lot of money when he was working as a brakeman for the Southern Pacific in San Francisco one year. He saw a Hudson, a brand new 1949 Hudson, and decided he wanted one, so he went to his bank, withdrew all his money, and bought one and went driving. For three months it is said he drove all over the country and to Mexico and back in his 1949 Hudson Commodore, driving with Jack and Allen and Louanne and various girls and hitchhikers until they drove back to California, and the Hudson was repossessed because Neal never made a payment oh it in those three months, and so they didn't have a car anymore.

This story has long been taken as a kind of gospel, but there is actually no evidence that Neal ever bought a Hudson, 1949 or otherwise. It's not even certain that many of the episodes Kerouac reported to have taken place in or with the Hudson in "On the Road" ever did. One thing I've wondered about is why, if Neal made a lot of money with the SP and took his entire savings to buy the 1949 Commodore, he would have any payments due on it. Hudsons weren't cheap, true. Fancy ones actually cost more than Cadillacs or Lincolns or Packards in those days, but still. So I don't know. Did Neal have a Hudson, or was Kerouac's report of it a novelist's conceit because the car looked like jazz and it fit the story's artistic development? Hard to say.

This passage in the Original Scroll Version of "On the Road" is one that popped out at me because of its jazzy-ness, and it has something to do with the Hudson, though it isn't mentioned:

Everything happened. We found the wild ecstatic Allen Anson and spent a night at his house in Long Island. Allen Anson lives in a nice house with his Aunt; when she dies the house is all his. Meanwhile she refuses to comply to any of his wishes and hates his friends. He brought this ragged gang of Neal, Louanne, Al and I and began a roaring party. The woman prowled upstairs; she threatened to call the police. “Oh shut up you old bag!” yelled Anson. I wondered how he could live with her like this. He had more books than I’ve ever seen in all my life…two libraries, two rooms loaded from floor to ceiling around all four walls, and such books as “The Explanation of the Apocalypse” in ten volumes. He played Verdi operas and pantomimed them in his pajamas with the great rip down the back. He didn’t give a damn about anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the NY waterfront with original 14th century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a great spider through the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in great stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstasy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He could hardly get a word out he was so excited with life. Neal stood before him with head bowed repeating over and over again “Yes…yes…yes.” He took me into a corner. “That Allen Anson is the greatest most wonderful of all. That’s what I was trying to tell you…that’s what I want to be…I want to be like him. He’s never hung up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth, man he’s the end! You see, if you go like him all the time you’ll finally get it.” “Get what?” “IT! IT! I’ll tell you---now no time, we have no time now.” Neal rushed back to watch Allen Anson some more. George Shearing the great jazz pianist, Neal said, was exactly like Allen Anson.

"Hut Sut Rawlson" is a novelty song from 1945 or so that continued being popular well into the 1950s. I sure remember it.

This is the Hudson that's kept at the Beat Museum in San Francisco. It's from the movie as there's no real proof that Neal Cassady ever had one.  But it's nice to think he might have.

Hudson merged with Nash, like Packard merged with Studebaker, and they all died out by the mid-to-late 50s. The big unique "bathtub" cars of the era made a splash and then were gone. Reminds me just a little bit of what happened to Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac come to think of it.

Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit.
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla sooit.
The brawla is the boy and girl, The Hut-Sut is their dream.
The sooit is the Teacher who caught them by the stream.
Now the boy and girl are back in school
Shattered is their dream
The teacher planted poison oak
All along the stream....

"On the Road" -- by Jack Kerouac (The Original Scroll...)

Kerouac's Own Design for the book's cover, c. 1952

The Scroll Version is a lot more fun than I thought the original Signet paperback was when I read it sometime in the early-mid 1960s. It's looser and more open, more visceral -- though that's hard to imagine -- more lyrical, and strangely, without paragraphs, it's easier to read. It flows naturally, weaving a story in and out, and I think you could literally open it anywhere, start reading, go back, circle around, and even read the same passages several times without losing anything. It's that kind of novel. "Whitmanesque" it's been called. There is a linear plot and storyline, but that linearity is only part of the quality of the near-novel. Take it apart and there's just as much there, maybe more. It's brilliant, it's fun, it's sex, drink, drugs and be-bop. Too early, you see, for rock and roll.

I'm old enough to remember be-bop. Way older than Jack-John-Ti-Jean ever got to be, way older than Neal Cassady, the motor of the crazy-car/truck trip that Kerouac took across the country back when I was barely a gleam in my parents' eyes.

Neal Cassady's Bad Boy Smug mug shot 7-11-1944, Denver, CO

Kerouac in 1942, having joined the Naval Reserves. (I always thought he was taller than that).

It was a simpler and more innocent time? No it was not. It was a different time, and unlike "Dharma Bums," which seems very contemporary or timeless to me, "On the Road" is rooted in its time, it is very late '40s-early '50s, gritty and rough as things were back then. I can remember bits and pieces of my own life from the era (though I've lost many memories in the interims of age) and it wasn't a paradise, far from it. "Gritty and rough" is being charitable. It was a world that had been through the most appalling of wars, the most crippling of economic depressions, the most apocalyptic natural disasters. It was a world that had come apart at the seams and was by no means put back together again. But it seemed to them that the survivors had survived the worst that the world had to offer.

It was the Post-War era when so many things seemed possible. And it is the possibility of the era that animates the story and the road trip, the adventure, the re-discovery almost reconceiving of America. It could only have happened because of the hobos who pioneered the paths criss-crossing the country during the Depression when Jack-John-Ti-Jean was just a boy. He must have been moved by the stories, for the travel themes would stay with him throughout the remainder of his life.

"On the Road" weaves multiple travel threads together and clues the reader to how that traveling formed the consciousness of some of the writers and mavens and personalities of the era. They cannot be separated from their perambulations, but I'm not entirely sure how someone like Allen Ginsberg got from New York to Denver to San Francisco. Did he take the train? Surely he didn't hitch-hike or take the bus like Kerouac did. Or maybe he did. He might have. We'll let that question sit for a bit.

I've only just begun re-reading (for me, this is the first time with the Scroll version). So far, it's fascinating and notably clearer than when I read the Signet version...

"Today's wild youth..." you bet