From vastly different backgrounds—Neal having been orphaned from any real sense of family or social position almost from his birth, while Jack was steeped in family to his very bones, and sought every sort of conventional validation, from school to sports to a useful role in society, and more—it was almost preordained that they would not trust each other at all, and, moreover, they had no basis for building that trust. Mutual friendship with two or three guys like Hal Chase and Ed White would not have been enough, since Chase and White barely trusted Neal themselves. There needed to be a very special key that would unlock Neal and Jack’s hearts toward each other, and that key was Lu Anne Henderson.
What gave the Beat Generation so much potency was its embodiment and unification—in a harmony that would previously have been thought impossible—of great opposites. The postwar period—the late 1940s and early 1950s—was arguably the most polarized period in American history. One was either a Communist or a democratic American, a churchgoer or an atheist, a practicer of marital fidelity or a promiscuous sex fiend. It was all either-ors, no in-betweens. The founders of the Beat Generation were, above all, seekers of gradations, explorers of the possible gray areas of human life. Kerouac and Cassady were, at the start, too far apart to bring each other the new possibilities that they eventually offered in the way of expanded humanity. It was Lu Anne who saw their similarities—who saw their heart, their caring, their desire to do good across the old boundaries and deep into a new world where the old values just didn’t make sense anymore. She coaxed and cajoled and argued them into accepting and valuing each other; she almost single-hand-edly brought them together into a deep friendship. That may seem like an extreme statement, and there may be no way of proving it. But I’d bet money on it if I could.
The fact is, when Jack and Neal first met, they had trouble talking to each other—this has been well-documented in the observations of many friends—beyond simply comparing their achievements: how far they could pass a football, how many books they’d read, how many Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins songs they knew by heart, and so forth. But each of them had long, soulful talks with Lu Anne. She was, among other things, one of the world’s great listeners. They both told her, separately, their most intimate life stories. She would then share what she’d learned from Neal with Jack, and what she’d learned from Jack with Neal. Their respect for, and trust of, each other began to grow, precisely because they both respected and trusted her.
Although she had little formal education, she had a profound understanding of people—and all those close to her saw it immediately. People, especially Jack and Neal, trusted her judgments. And so she made them both believe that each was worthy of the other’s love and concern. It didn’t hurt that she also tied them all together in one big love knot. But with or without the shared sexual bonds, she was a powerful cement that held them together. And the nature of that cement was precisely the goodness and honesty she brought to every relationship. Her love for Neal made Jack see, and believe in, things he had never suspected in Neal earlier; and ditto for Neal with Jack. Furthermore, she made them see that they loved each other equally—that each one’s love and respect for the other was fully reciprocated—something both men doubted for a long time. But when Lu Anne told them it was so, they had to believe it.
Lu Anne brought Neal and Jack close enough for the nuclear fusion to finally occur—and with it, the explosion that changed life in America forever. Neal’s relentless action joined with Jack’s endless weighing of possibilities, Jack’s dawdling over details with Neal’s speedy pursuit of the macrodestination; Jack’s excessive Catholic conscience joined with Neal’s forced pragmatism of a homeless street kid; Jack’s rigid (but often sharp and canny) working-class politics and political categories joined with Neal’s apolitical pursuit of the greatest common good; and Jack’s belief in a personal God in the clouds joined with Neal’s homegrown pantheism, his belief that God was as much in a car’s gears or a woman’s thighs as in any traditional religious heaven.