Intellectual Curiosities and Provocations

January 1996

A Note from Los Gatos: the John Cassady Interview

Beat Generation,
Interviews,
Summer Of Love
In August 1995 I began corresponding via e-mail with John Cassady, the son of late Beat hero Neal Cassady. John still lives and works in the vicinity of Los Gatos, the legendary homestead of the Cassady family. He has not spoken much in public about the legacy of his father or his own unusual upbringing, and after exchanging several e-mails we agreed to conduct an in-depth interview. This is a record of the entire correspondence.

• Part One: How This Interview Happened

This article is part of the The John Cassady Interview series. The next post in the series is John Cassady Interview: How This Interview Happened. The previous post in the series is John Cassady: Memories of Jerry.

John Cassady Interview: How This Interview Happened

Beat Generation,
Interviews,
Summer Of Love

I think it had something to do with Jerry Garcia dying. It was in the days following that, anyway, that I received an e-mail from a stranger named Pat Gallagher. I get lots of e-mail about my Literary Kicks web site, sometimes too much, and often I have to remind myself not to skim, because I might miss something important. This was a case in point:

Hello Levi:

This article is part of the The John Cassady Interview series. The next post in the series is John Cassady Interview. The previous post in the series is A Note from Los Gatos: the John Cassady Interview.

John Cassady Interview: Odds and Ends

Beat Generation,
Interviews


Pat Gallagher went to Lowell recently, and took this photo of Jack Kerouac's grave. She'd placed Neal's two posthumous books, "The First Third" (his unfinished autobiography) and "Grace Beats Karma" (his letters from Prison) on the gravestone, and I found this reuniting of the two old friends, who'd died a year apart, pretty touching.

This article is part of the The John Cassady Interview series. The next post in the series is John Cassady Interview: Pat’s Story. The previous post in the series is John Cassady Interview.

John Cassady Interview: Pat’s Story

Beat Generation,
Interviews

Pat Gallagher writes:

I'd been at Caere for about four months when I went out for drinks with the after-work party crowd at the Black Watch, a dirty, sleazy, scummy little bar which is for some reason wildly popular with the local yuppies and college crowd. People were astonished to see me as apparently my department doesn't get out much.

This article is part of the The John Cassady Interview series. The previous post in the series is John Cassady Interview: Odds and Ends.

Beat News: January 16 1996

Events,
New York City
1. A Gathering of the Tribes is the online presence of a Lower East Side organization comprising an art gallery, poetry magazine and theatre workshop, among other things. This organization has been a constructive independent force in the downtown arts scene for several years, but the person who founded it, Steve Cannon, may be about to lose the East 3rd Street building that houses the operation.

This article is part of the Beat News series. The next post in the series is Beat News: February 7 1996. The previous post in the series is Beat News: January 3 1996.