Neal Cassady was possibly one of the most famous non-fictional literary figures ever. Written about most famously by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he also played important roles in the writings of John Clellon Holmes, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, and Sonny Barger. So when the rising stars of the Beat Generation literary movement insisted he try to write a novel, Neal Cassady gave in and tried. The results were not spectacular but for fans of the great American counter-cultures of the 20th century, his book The First Third & Other Writings will probably be worth at least one good read.
The First Third is Neal Cassady’s attempt at writing an autobiographical novel. In the Prologue, he gives accounts of his family history, both from his father’s and mother’s sides. The story of his father’s life and ancestry are detailed, possibly inaccurate, and sometimes you might wonder why Cassady thought to say as much as he did. A similar comment could be made about his mother’s life story and family tree with the addition that it is hard to tell what he meant to say until the mention of his mother’s birth. These passages have their moments but it often reads like Neal Cassady was more concerned with getting the stories on paper than he was in making them interesting. The writing is adequately good and clear in some spots but in other places it is more like lists of information than actual literature.
The main passages of The First Third are all about Cassady’s childhood. Some parts of it are vivid and even exciting. The story takes place during the Great Depression. His father, also named Neal, was a barber and an alcoholic. They spend a lot of time in the streets of Denver and sleeping in skid row hotels while his father gets too drunk to function in any meaningful way. Cassady writes about his wanderings through the city and his exploratory adventures in junkyards and other industrial wastelands. He also goes on a hitchhiking trip across the country with his father. Later in the autobiography, he goes to live with his mother; his older step-brothers are bullies and little Neal watches as they beat the hell out of his father for being drunk. Neal Cassady also begins sexual experimentation with other kids in his neighborhood at a precocious age; a child psychologist would probably attribute this to parental neglect, something that appears to have been a big factor in the childhood of the author. But Neal Cassady never writes as though he feels sorry for himself; this is not victim literature and he often writes as if his obviously painful life were fun and a never-ending adventure.
Some of the most clearly written passages are also the most grotesque. In one instance, six year old Neal enters a hotel room where a drunken bum with no legs is masturbating. This, in itself, does not surprise him but what he does find shocking is that a man in his 40s is able to get a hard-on. The kid had a lot to learn. Another time, his sadistic older brothers torture a cat to death by stomping on its head until its brains pop out. They throw the dead cat down an alley and Neal goes to look at it. He finds, by coincidence, that the corpse landed on a book that had been stolen from him a long time ago. His descriptions of playing doctor with little girls aren’t exactly pretty either.
There are some badly written passages too, in fact, there are lots of them. Cassady often tried to write marathon sentences, going on for as long as he could without using a period. There are many parts that degenerate into nonsense and babbling. There are also several passages where he introduces a character or a plot line then goes off on tangents that lead to further tangents without him ever returning to the original point. Or if he does return to where he started, it doesn’t make sense because the sidetrack went on for so long you forget what it was it was originally meant to be about. Supposedly Neal Cassady wrote this with the intention of writing like his favorite author, Marcel Proust. But writing under such an influence with a mind moving at warp-speed did not do Cassady justice. His writing is too self-conscious to ever really take off and fly for prolonged periods of time. A lot of the times the narrative is like climbing a hill while dragging a bag full of bricks behind you.
But when Neal Cassady wrote at his best, there is something genuine and stylistically American so that it winds up being tragic that he did not try harder to pursue a literary career. There is something reminiscent of great American authors like Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, and John Steinbeck in the way he writes about his family and the American experience.
The sections of story fragments and letters at the end of this volume are some of the better narratives. The story about Cherry Mary is hilarious. There is a lot of stuff about stealing cars and some crude sex talk that sounds like male locker room conversations. One chapter is the beginning of a story about a great race car driver that is obviously modeled on Neal Cassady himself. The race car driver always wins in competitions because his mind works 500 times faster than everybody else’s. These passages are more true to the character and personality of Neal Cassady himself. When he doesn’t try too hard to be a great writer, his inhibitions come down, his self-consciousness disappears, and he writes the way he thinks. This still isn’t great literature but it is more interesting and true to life than what Cassady wrote in The First Third.
This book is not going to have wide appeal. The writing is not great and it will not speak to most readers. It definitely is an item of interest for those who are in love with the Neal Cassady mythology. Despite the rough pacing and confusing descriptions, this still comes across clearly as his own genuine voice rather than a version of the man as portrayed by other great writers. There is just enough good writing here to make you wish he had tried harder as an author. Neal Cassady was probably too manic, too energetic, too scatter-brained to really sit down for long periods in order to concentrate on writing in earnest. Then again, we are fortunate that he lived the way he did because the whirlwind of his life stirred up so much interesting culture and controversy in his wake. We are fortunate that he chose the life of a wild role model rather than a writer, even if he was a bad role model.
Cassady, Neal. The First Third & Other Writings. City Lights, San Francisco: 1992.
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