Today's topic is one dear to my heart...Beat literature history! I've been interested since someone I worked with at a coffeeshop in high school moved to San Francisco and gave me a Jack Kerouac 4-tape box set as a parting gift. But, that's another story for another day...
The recent publication of The Joan Anderson Letter: The Holy Grail of the Beat Generation (Black Spring Press, 2020 & 2021) has helped to bring this information to lovers of Beat literature and culture. I had the great honor of talking with Jami Cassady, Neal Cassady’s daughter, and her husband, Randy Ratto, who brought the full letter to publication after it had been missing for over 60 years. Although a segment of the letter was previously published in 1971 by City Lights as an addendum to Neal’s memoirs, The First Third, this is the first publication of the long-lost letter in its entirety. The current publication contains a scholarly introduction placing it in literary history, plus timelines of Neal Cassady’s life, Beat history, and photographs of the original, typed letter, which was written in 1950.
Petunia Press: Can you give a brief history of where the letter has been all these years and how it came to publication?
Randy: In 1950, Neal wrote Jack [the] letter in a stream-of-consciousness style. Jack said it was the “greatest piece of writing” he’d ever seen. Jack mailed it to Allen [Ginsberg] and said, “You’ve got to get this published.” Allen sent it to Gerd Stern, a small publisher. Stern said a gust of wind blew it off his houseboat and into the Sausalito Bay. This did not happen. Gerd repeatedly denied this story (to this day). He said Allen liked to play pranks and this story was one of them.
Jami: What happened was that Allen Ginsberg mailed it to a small publisher in Berkeley, CA. Then it ended up at Golden Goose Press. Jack Spinoza kept that letter for 60 years in a desk drawer. It was found by his daughter, Jean, after he passed away. Not knowing what to make of it, she enlisted the help of Mike McQuate, who knew immediately the significance of the find. That was in 2012.
Randy: It became known as the Holy Grail of the Beat Generation, as it was the missing piece that was the basis for Beat literature, which really was called “the new journalism”—fictionalized truth. One great example of what that became is Hunter Thompson and his books; he was a big fan of Neal Cassady.
Jami: Jean held on to the letter until Mom passed away in 2013. Then Jean put it up for auction with Profiles in History, a Southern California auction house with a TV show, also. Randy was reading the San Francisco Chronicle on a Friday and saw the letter was being auctioned off that next Monday. We got our IP lawyer to intervene and stopped the auction.
Petunia Press: Why was this letter so important to literary history?
Jami: At the time, Kerouac was writing Visions of Cody. He had already published Town and the City—boring, novel type writing. When the Joan Anderson letter came along—woo! It was jazz and bop…
Randy: It was like music. In those days in New York, musicians appeared and wanted more improvisation. Gillespe, Coltrane—the greats were there in Harlem and you could see them at nightclubs for a nickel. Charlie Parker for a nickel! The same thing that happened in jazz happened in literature. It has to do with non-conformity.
Jami: After WWII, the government rewarded Americans for the victory by granting low-interest loans for housing and education. The intellectuals, writers, poets, and artists did not want to be conformists. A group of them going to Columbia University in New York around then (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Bill Burroughs, Hal Chase, Lucian Carr, and others) began to explore and embrace the counter-culture (not yet named).
Randy: Looking for new ways of expression, Neal—in person and in his letters—was the spark they needed to create a new and exciting way forward.
Neal's Joan Anderson letter, written in 1950, to Jack Kerouac, opened up a floodgate of creativity!
Petunia Press: Neal published one book that was meant to be a book—his memoirs, The First Third. The other collections of his writing are letters that he wrote to other people. For me, the memoir persona is more relatable than the persona in The Joan Anderson Letter; it’s down-to-Earth, whereas the persona in Joan seems too wild to be true—he couldn’t possibly be that way all the time. Which persona did you know of your father at home?
Jami: Dad writing about his ancestors and his growing up [The First Third] would definitely be in a different style than him writing to his buddy about his sexual conquests! He was funny; he was just a father. He was our dad; he drove me to ballet class and rode the go-carts with my brother. He worked on the Southern Pacific Railroad for 10 years—never missed a day—so he had his uniform and then he’d go off on a 2-week stint…he was just Dad. He wasn’t anything else. It wasn’t until I came of age—14—that then I knew who he was. Mom never wanted us to turn out like him.
Petunia Press: Did you know him as a writer?
Jami: As a child I remember Dad more as a performer than a writer. He and Jack and Mom would use the reel-to-reel to read Proust and Shakespeare and sing and fool around. They let us kids [Cathy, Jami, and John] record silly stuff, also. I never saw Dad writing, letters or anything, that I remember. I took a writing class, and the teacher said he was famous as a writer. But I had never known that. He wrote me one letter when I was 14. I knew that he and Mom and Jack and Allen had letters—that was just part of my growing up—but I never knew. It wasn’t until I read Grace Beats Karma—letters to Mom [from his stint in San Quentin prison], that I tried to get to the story of why he was arrested. When I read those, I was flabbergasted and excited. When I read that book, I knew he was brilliant. And then, now Joan Anderson.
Petunia Press: I have to admit; The Joan Anderson Letter is a difficult read for me. Your dad (or the fictionalized persona of your dad)’s view of women is not easy for me to accept. What are your thoughts on that aspect of his life?
Jami: I have not read the entire letter; it is difficult, both in language and spacing. One of Dad's demons was a constant need for sex. He was like that his entire life. I am surprised he wrote so graphically, but it is true to his addiction. In person, he was a complete gentleman—honored women and was very kind. That's how he treated Mom and all of our family friends. He had great charisma, charm, and intelligence (and beautiful blue eyes). But he was an opportunist. He also hung on to his Catholic view of women. They were either Madonnas or whores.
Petunia Press: You’ve said in interviews that as he got involved with Ken Kesey and the Pranksters, a lot of that persona was a projection—he had to live up to that persona that he had created or had been created for him. When viewed in the context of his life and his other writings, Joan Anderson seems like part of your dad’s performance art.
Jami: He was trying to impress; it was performance art. That persona was larger than life. That’s what he told Mom. She’d say, “Neal, why don’t you stop?” He said, “They expect it of me. They expect me to do this.” He never had a home after Mom divorced him. He lived at La Honda with Kesey. They fed him drugs and stuff and in four years he was dead. He had a death wish his whole life.
Petunia Press: Let’s talk about your mom. Although she was not publishing at the time of the other Beat writers, she eventually chronicled her life with Neal and Jack (and her correspondence with Allen, who was very much a part of your lives) in Heart Beat, which eventually became more fleshed out for a more extensive memoir, Off the Road. Her writing is very relatable to me. Among all these men who each had their own take on what was happening at the time, she seemed like The Great Equalizer and put it all in perspective.
Jami: Well, thank you. Randy and I have been trying to bring her in the forefront. We have all her sketches, paintings, manuscripts, costume design…she was a true Renaissance woman; simply amazing. I wish I’d known that when she was alive.
Petunia Press: You’re traveling to the Denver area for a few days. What do you have planned?
Jami: We’re going to be out there celebrating Mom and Dad, promoting the book and independent bookstores, and promoting our mission…
Randy: …to promote the counterculture, and keep the myths and truths of Neal out in the open, make sure they stay alive. It’s important for people to live their lives like him—don’t listen to what society or civilization says—do what you want to do. Don’t stop. Keep going.
Jami: Jack wrote, “Neal lived.” He did have a lot of dark qualities, but he was a huge pacifist; he broke up a fight at San Quentin. Even though he had his demons, he also tried very hard to show his other side.
Join Jami and Randy in Denver/Boulder for book signings,
merchandise sales, display of Neal and Carolyn Cassady archives, and
the first live reading of
The Joan Anderson Letter!
(Verify event information and times with venues before attending.)
Friday, June 25 &
Saturday, June 26
Mutiny Information Café, Denver (All day)
Sunday, June 27
Book Bar, Denver (All day)
Monday, June 28
Beat Book Shop, Boulder (All day)
Monday, June 28 (8:30-10:30 P.M.)
First Live Reading of The Joan Anderson Letter!
1290 Folsom Street, Boulder
Readers include local poets: Ed White, Tom Peter's, Zack Kopp and Reed Bye.
The Joan Anderson Letter: Holy Grail of the Beat Generation is available on Amazon and at Black Spring Press Group.
--Interview by Joy Rosenberg.
Thank you to Jami and Randy for sharing your family’s history and this important literary history! –J.R.
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