Carolyn Cassady speaks candidly about her new novel
| February 25th, 2009
To celebrate Neal Cassady’s 83rd birthday earlier this month, San Francisco’s Beat Museum had Carolyn Cassady stop by to sign a few copies of Off the Road. Published late last year, the novel sketches an intimate look at one of the Beat Generation’s most notorious characters: her husband Neal Cassady.
A few days before, The San Francisco Examiner put up a short interview with Carolyn Cassady that I will now excerpt here:
How do you think Neal Cassady influenced San Francisco? It was later when he got known, from [Jack] Kerouac’s writing that he had an influence. And the reason he was [in San Francisco] was because I moved there in 1947 and he followed me. And Kerouac followed him, and [Allen] Ginsberg followed him. So there would never have been a Beat scene there otherwise.
So his influence didn’t come until later? Yes, because Kerouac was inspired by [Neal’s] letters, and changed his whole style because of those letters. And then Kerouac created “On the Road,” a book that Neal didn’t like but that he kind of inspired. And the more kids read it, the more they wanted to know about Dean Moriarty [the character inspired by Neal].
Neal didn’t like “On the Road”? He didn’t like Kerouac celebrating features that he was trying to overcome. His whole life was spent on becoming respectable or worthy. I liked the book for the writing, but not for the portrait of Neal.
What was it that you were trying to impart with your book? I wanted to present a more complete picture of Neal. The others never celebrated his brilliant mind or education. And, that he was a family man as well. What a wonderful father he was.
I can’t help but think about the man Cassady would have become had he not eaten all that Secobarbital and died.
Buy Off the Road from Amazon here.
Carolyn Cassady offers a new view to Beat legend Neal Cassady [SF Examiner]
When I was an 17 year old runaway I was hitchhiking from Santa Barbara to marin County and got picked up in a VW bus and taken to Lime Kiln Creek in Big Sur where there was a huge 3 day “memorial” for Neal Cassady in 1968.
I met my husband and father of my children there and feel somewhat connected to Neal Cassady as a result he kind of changed my life.