One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road
Gerald Nicosia
To my very own Doris Day
Mother, I love you. “Que sera, sera.”
—A.M.S.
To Sylvia Anna Fremer Nicosia,
known as “San,”
and all the mothers who try to make
a better world for their children
—G.N.
We’ll be together, you are my one and only wife.
—Neal Cassady to Lu Anne Cassady
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Of course, my first thanks go out to the spirit of Lu Anne Henderson Cassady. If she hadn’t granted me those two interviews, neither this book nor a whole lot else would exist. Thanks of course to Larry Lee, too, another angel who got his wings the hard way. It was Larry’s act of kindness in sharing Lu Anne’s whereabouts with me that opened the door for me with her in the first place. A big thanks to Walter Salles and the entire cast and crew of the movie On the Road. If Walter hadn’t asked me to be part of the initial work on that film, I would not have listened again to that full seven-and-a-half-hour taped interview, which had been locked up in an archive in Lowell, Massachusetts, for many years, beyond everyone’s reach. My work as an advisor to Walter and other crew members, especially Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, and Garrett Hedlund, helped me focus my own thoughts about Lu Anne.
There is no way I can adequately express my enormous debt to Lu Anne’s daughter, Anne Marie Santos, who allowed me to put my brief experience with Lu Anne in a far larger and longer context. By the same token, I have to thank Al Hinkle and his daughter Dawn Hinkle Davis for their great generosity in sharing stories that added vastly to the richness of the narrative. My editor and publisher, Brenda Knight, was a sine qua non of this project, as were the core staff members of Cleis Press and its co-publishers Felice Newman and Frédérique Delacoste. Thanks to so many others who contributed photographs and other key pieces of the puzzle—including, especially, photographers Jerry Bauer, James Oliver Mitchell, and Larry Keenan, Jr., who by themselves and on little funding documented a wide swath of America’s germinating counterculture. Thanks to my family, of course—Ellen, Amy, and Peter—for support and patience during my work on the book. And thanks most of all to the angelic spirits of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady—not for getting us all into this mess, but for showing us the beginning of a way out. Pax vobi-scum to that whole ragtag bunch called the Beat Generation.
—G.N.
First thank-you goes to Gerry Nicosia for reaching out to me and guiding me through this amazing experience.
To Brenda Knight and all those at Cleis Press and Viva Editions who believed in this project.
Thank you to my love Reuben (TT&F), to Katie, Erin, Mason, and Mia, without whom I could not exist.
To all the women in my family who came before, onward we go.
Most importantly, to Mother and my daughter Melissa, the bravest and most loving of women, and I was the lucky one loved by both. Thank you.
—Annie Ree
INTRODUCTION
THE NECESSARY ESTROGEN