The First Third & Other Writings by Neal Cassady [REVISED & EXPANDED PAPERBACK] 1991 • City Lights

The First Third & Other Writings by Neal Cassady

REVISED + EXPANDED EDITION PAPERBACK [1991] CITY LIGHTS

10th Trade Paperback printing / 1991, revised and expanded with a new prologue. 

Book is in excellent condition.

Like new with minor trace shelf wear.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Immortalized as Dean Moriarty by Jack Kerouac in his epic novel, On the Road, Neal Cassady was infamous for his unstoppable energy and his overwhelming charm, his savvy hustle and his devil-may-care attitude. A treasured friend and traveling companion of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Ken Kesey, to name just some of his cohorts on the beatnik path, Cassady lived life to the fullest, ready for inspiration at any turn.

This is the original much lost-and-found book of autobiographical writing by the "real life hero" of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

The Prologue has never before been published, and the entire "First Third" has been revised and reset according to the final revisions by the author recently discovered through Ed McClanahan and Ken Babbs. The saga of the final manuscript's recovery is recounted in an After-word by Carolyn Cassady, and there is a new Editor's Note by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Before he died in Mexico in 1968, just four days short of his 44th birthday, Neal Cassady had written the jacketblurb for this book: "Seldom has there been a story of man so balled up. No doubt many readers will not believe the veracity of the author, but I assure these doubting Thomases that every incident, as such, is true...."

This is a collation of the actual writing Cassady did, and does not include transcriptions of the myriad, scattered tape-recordings he made mostly during a later period (what might be called the "second third" of his life) when Kerouac dropped out of his speeding sights and he drove Ken Kesey's bus with its destination-sign reading FURTHER  He never got to live the "last third."