lawsuit commenced against estates of kerouac and cassidy over title to joan anderson letter

last week jean spinosa, the woman who discovered the long lost joan anderson letter, filed suit against the estates and heirs of jack kerouac and neal Cassidy to judicially determine title (who owns the letter and contents thereof).  according to the report in courthouse new service, in addition to the letter itself (18 pages), there is also an additional page (the 19th) not part of the letter, per se, but contains material written by cassady where he "separately details the loss of his virginity and other sexual encounters[!]"

the lawsuit seeks to resolve claims between spinosa and someone who has alleged he is entitled to a portion of the proceeds from the auction of the letter, pursuant to an agreement that they made.  he alleges that he is entitled to one half of the proceeds from the sale.  spinosa denies there was any agreement and that he is entitled to any proceeds from the sale.

stay tuned.  i'll update this when the defendants submit their answers to the complaint.

more twists & turns from kerouac and cassady estates regarding "joan anderson letter'

last week sfgate reported on a couple of new developments in the ongoing saga of the recently discovered joan anderson letter - both involved lawyers.  in the first, lawyers in florida moved to reopen the estate of jack kerouac on behalf on paul blake, kerouac's nephew.  that's a direct consequence of a 2009 decision that held the last will and testament of gabriella kerouac - jack's mother - was a fake.  that surrogate's court decision was ultimately affirmed on appeal.  what remains to be seen is how that holding will impact the title and distribution of the joan anderson letter if it's found to be the property of jack kerouac.

in the second development, the cassady family has retained the services of marc toberoff, an intellectual property attorney. it doesn't seem to be in dispute that the estate of neal cassay owns the copyright to the contents of the joan anderson letter.  but, in a novel twist - pun intended - the joan anderson letter has been referred to as a manuscript.  in a distinction with a difference because whether it's a letter or a manuscript can lead to different outcomes with respect to ownership of the actual document (separate and apart from the contents).  it will be interesting to see how a court rules in that regard.

in any event, stay tuned because the saga will certainly continue!

auction of "joan anderson" letter canceled as result of claims by kerouac and cassady estates

in a predictable turn of events, following the assertion of claims by the estates of jack kerouac and neal cassady over ownership of the letter and contents thereof, respectively, the auction of the "joan anderson" letter scheduled for december 17 has been canceled (or indefinitely postponed).  shortly after news that the letter was miraculously found - and would be auctioned off - the kerouac estate claimed ownership of the letter and sought "an agreeable split of the proceeds."  with no agreement reached (estimates of the letter's value ranged from $300-500,000), the auction house, "profiles in history," canceled the auction and announced that it would institute legal proceedings to judicially resolve the various ownership claims to the letter.

stay tuned as the saga of the "joan anderson" letter continues to unfold.

estates of jack kerouac and neal cassady assert claims to "joan anderson" letter

it didn't take long - less than a week actually - since the discovery of the long considered lost "joan anderson" letter was found, before the estates of jack kerouac and neal cassady asserted claims to it.  the sfgate reported on thursday that representatives from the respective estates have made demands for a portion of the proceeds from the upcoming action of the letter.  in particular, if a settlement isn't reached, the Kerouac estate may seek to have the auction - currently scheduled for december 17 - put on hold.  the estate is actually asking for the return of the letter.

as a general rule, with respect to letters, courts have held that the actual document - the letter itself - is the property of the recipient.  the contents, on the other hand - the intellectual property rights to the material - remain the property of the sender.  whether the passage of time may effect that initial determination would ultimately be decided by the courts.

whether the contents of the letter can be published is a separate inquiry from the initial question of ownership.  the estate of neal cassady would generally have to consent to the publication of the letter.  whether the passage of time altered that result, once again would be a question for the courts.  a portion of the letter was originally published in cassady's book "the first third."

stay tuned for more news on the fate of the "joan anderson" letter!

neal cassady's "joan anderson letter" to jack kerouac is discovered!

long considered lost, neal cassady's epic "joan anderson letter" written to jack kerouac in the early 1950's and credited for inspiring kerouac's "on the road" writing style - was discovered, intact, in a storage box from a long defunct small literary magazine.  as reported by the associated press, the letter will be auctioned off on december 17 -- but the full text has yet to be released to the public.

the 16,000+ word, 18 page letter has been considered the holy grail of beat generation lore. about one-third of the letter has been available because it had been transcribed (probably by kerouac himself) and made public (it's available on-line).  but the original had been thought lost - at one point thought tossed overboard from a houseboat.

but the reality was less exciting.  apparently allen ginsberg had sent the letter to the "golden goose press" in san francisco - where it remained in the unopened mailer.  when the small press closed, the publisher boxed up all the unopened submissions.  amazingly, instead of heading into the trash, the boxes found their way into the garage of someone who shared office space with the publisher.  the letter remained, unopened, in that box for almost the next 60 years!  truth apparently is stranger than fiction!

hopefully, the purchaser of the letter will see fit to publish the full text!

happy birthday neal cassady - 85 years old in heaven today!

neal cassady, the "dean moriarty" of jack kerouac's "on the road" and "secret hero" of allen ginsberg's "howl" is 85 years old in heaven today. cassady was born on february 8, 1926, and died tragically in mexico on february 4, 1968, at the way too young age of 41. during the 40's and 50's, cassady - through his close relationships with kerouac and ginsberg - was an integral part of the nascent beat generation.

by the end of the decade, cassady was a quasi-tragic figure as he found himself in san quentin for marijuana possession. then, in the early 60's he befriended ken kesey and morphed into one of his merry pranksters. cassady become the official driver of the intrepid psychedelic bus "further" - as he criss-crossed the country with a new generation of hipsters.

aside from his unfinished biography, published posthumously as "the first third," and his collected correspondence, cassady wrote no prose or poetry. in that regard he wasn't technically beat generation author in the classic sense. but cassady letters to kerouac in the late 1940's were the inspiration behind kerouac's break from the tom wolfe style his prose then aped to kerouac's more famous "spontaneous" prosody of the 1950's.

one of cassady's more infamous letters - known as the "joan anderson letter" (of which only a significant fragment survives) - was made into a movie, "the last time i committed suicide." put it on your netflix queue and check it out!

happy birthday, neal cassady, in heaven!

"the last time i committed suicide" movie review

after the disappointing "neal cassady" biopic, i added the "other" neal cassady film to my netflix queue. "the last time i committed suicide" is based on the legendary 17 page "joan anderson" letter that neal cassady wrote to jack kerouac in december, 1950. the letter, of which only an 8 page fragment survives, was the catalyst that broke kerouac free from his earlier writing style and launched his "spontaneous" prose. in fact, the original scroll version of "on the road" was written the following spring.

just as the contents of the joan anderson letter were less interesting to kerouac (and allen ginsberg) than the revelation of cassady's uninhibited writing style, so too did the plot hold less interest than the incredible atmospherics and intense period accuracy of the film! i loved watching the film unfold, mesmerized by the images and colors that just popped off the screen. the story, unfortunately, degenerated into a quasi-soap operatic chick flick. there was hardly any connection to the hard-edged, scheming cassady of real life.

the film, instead, portrayed the more angelic (sad, fallen angel more accurate) version of neal. thomas jane does a good job as film version (angelic) neal. there was a decidedly more sinister edge to the real neal, which isn't found (even fleetingly) here. it was surprising that keanu reeves got top billing for what was barely a supporting role - harry, the gruff pool hall buddy. he is a minor character, totally in the shadow of neal's two primary interests: joan, of course, and mary, for his wandering eyes.

the film ends, with joan (as, presumably, his first lost love?) out of the picture - forgive the pun - and neal is scribbling furiously, at what can only be, the emerging "joan anderson" letter. it left me less than overwhelmed, but satisfied because (fictional or not) the filmmaker stayed true to the letter - another easy pun - of cassady's work. it's an an incredibly well-constructed period piece.

"neal cassady" movie review

Last night I watched the Sundance Channel premiere of “Neal Cassady” - an ostensible biopic of the legendary beat generation muse, Neal Cassady. The film was an incredibly frustrating disappointment. Luckily, it was only 80 minutes long, and entirely forgettable. For a huge fan of the beat generation - in all its varied guises, watching a film so riddled with inaccuracies was a painful experience, in and of itself. As a film, “Neal Cassady” failed to capture any semblance of the seriously flawed man who was mythologized in the works of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

Within seconds of the film’s start, the inaccuracies started: opening with Kerouac in the dressing room, waiting to go on what was, presumably, the Steve Allen show, he’s approached and seduced by a fan. That may have been artistic license, but seconds later he’s on the set and asked by the interviewer, presumably Steve Allen, about his new movie, “The Subterraneans” and asked to read from it. Not to carp on details, but that book hadn’t been published when he appeared on the Steve Allen show (and far from being made into a movie, which itself was a grotesque shadow of the novel - only sharing the title, in fact).

That opening sequence, so utterly ridiculous, pointedly showed how little the filmmaker, Noah Buschel - who wrote and directed the film - understood of his main characters! Kerouac appeared on the Steve Allen show and read from “On the Road.” But, more significantly, he then went on to read passages from “Visions of Cody” - surreptitiously! Kerouac, at that time, believed he had moved on from his prose style of the “Road” novel, and more intensely captured the “real” Neal Cassady in his experimental prose work (“Visions”). The symbolism of Kerouac’s actual appearance and reading could not be more apt to kick off the film!

More glaring factual mistakes are just downright carelessness - last I checked, Neal and Carolyn Cassady had THREE children, not the just two! But to revisit the road trip Keroauc and Cassady took, Buschel had Neil tentatively asking some jaded pool hall denizen if he knew Neil’s dad (an out of work alcoholic, to put it mildly). Cassady never did things that tentatively - it contradicted the very essence of his being. Watching that pitiful exchange on film was the second realization in the first 10 minutes that Buschel had no handle on his character.

The film is barely 80 minutes long. The bulk of that time is spent on Cassady’s interaction with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. By that point in Neal’s life he was a shell of his former self - and the beat generation had long since faded into history, replaced with the flower children of the 1960s. Neal Cassady is all the more interesting because he was a bridge between two generations. He found himself immersed in Kesey’s “Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests” and became the official bus driver for “Further” - on their cross country travels!

A lot was left out of this film - obviously there is not enough time in 80 minutes to tell the full story! It left out the explanation of his arrest for marijuana possession (and Kerouac’s guilt over what he believed was the intense focus on Neal brought on by his portrayal of him in “On the Road”). And there was no mention of the Grateful Dead? The Dead were the house band at Kesey’s Acid Tests, so I was very surprised at that omission. The Grateful Dead’s “Cassady” honors Neil’s memory.

This film does not (and it also prompted a deservedly bitter response from Carolyn Cassady).
_____________________________________________

for a good film on the early neal, check out "the last time i committed suicide."