Off the Road tells the intimate story of two of the most famous, and yet enigmatic, figures in modern literature - Jack Kerouac and his friend, travelling companion and hero, Neal Cassady. Written by the woman who loved them both - as wife of Cassady, lover of Kerouac - it is the remarkable record of marriage to the man whose exploits, as Dean Moriarty in On the Road, caught the imagination of a generation and fired the Beat movement. Carolyn Cassady's book spans one of the most vital areas in twentieth-century literature and culture. It begins in the early days of Kerouac and Cassady's friendship, when the former was a struggling author trying to make his way with his first novel, and goes on to the explosive success of On the Road and Ginsberg's Howl, the flowering of the 'Beat generation', and the social revolution of the 1960s which saw Kerouac and Cassady - by then famed as driver of Ken Kesey's legendary Merry Pranksters 'bus' taken up as founding fathers of the emerging worldwide hippy movement.

All the components of the Jack Kerouac legend are here: the excesses of alcohol and drugs; the soul searching; the characters--Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lucien Carr, John Clellon Holmes and William Burroughs, Jack's mother, Gabrielle, and the other women in Kerouac's life. There is also a record of the travels that became the basis for On the Road and Visions of Cody, the death-shrouded childhood that became Mexico City Blues and Tristessa, and the stupor of fame that weighed on him as he tried to articulate his torments in Big Sur. This edition is newly revised with a new introduction by the author.

"Dave Moore's work on this collection is simply awesome.... It should become and remain the definitive reference book for Beat scholars forever." --Carolyn Cassady

Neal Cassady is best remembered today as Jack Kerouac's muse and the basis for the character "Dean Moriarty" in Kerouac's classic On The Road, and as one of Ken Kesey's merriest of Merry Pranksters, the driver of the psychedelic bus "Further," immortalized in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This collection brings together more than two hundred letters to Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, John Clellon Holmes, and other Beat generation luminaries, as well as correspondence between Neal and his wife, Carolyn. These amazing letters cover Cassady's life between the ages of 18 and 41 and finish just months before his death in February 1968. Brilliantly edited by Dave Moore, this unique collection presents the "Soul of the Beat Generation" in his own words--sometimes touching and tender, sometimes bawdy and hilarious. Here is the real Neal Cassady--raw and uncut.