Neal Cassady - The First Third

 I'm certain that I've read some of Cassady's writings here'n'there, but don't believe that I've ever read an entire book by him. This is an autobiography of his early years - "the first third" of his life - and he has a bit of a Kerouac-ian, spirited, freeform, breathless rant (possibly Kerouac got that from the fast-talking Cassady?) that gives us plenty of flavor and details of his youth in Denver. With an alcoholic father, a poor mother, and abusive half-brothers, he spends plenty of time on the street, sometimes with his homeless father and sometimes just exploring as far as his feet and his energy would take him. 

While he does his best to keep his story relatively chronological, he can't stop himself from going on innumerable tangents which revolve back'n'forth in time in a fairly convoluted way, which means that you have to really be paying attention in order to keep up with the man. These sidesteps can be quite entertaining but you/I tend to lose track of the original tale in the process.

There is a sudden jump from pre-teen to late teenager/early twenties, where he is dealing with different relationships but these overlap, as well, and are too many to keep track of. There's also a separate chapter that Allen Ginsberg dictated by hand while Neal explained the plot of a story that he wanted to write, which he told in his own tangled way while cleaning a batch of marijuana!

Towards the end, this collection of writings - as opposed to an actual biography, and there is a subtitle on the back "...and other writings" - compiles letters to the likes of Kerouac, Ken Kesey and others, which are written in the same wildly ravin' style.

In person, he must've been way too manic for a lot of people to handle, but his writing does captivate you. A helluva tale from a true original!