Review: The Untold Story of On the Road

Kevin Riordan

Celebrated author and Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia is the white knight of Beat scholarship, rescuing another damsel from the distress of obscurity, marginalization and an undeserved bad reputation. His work with the late Jan Kerouac became a crusade, and the slim volume of tributes that he edited, Jan Kerouac: A Life in Memory, shows just a fraction of the massive struggle to restore her position and rights. In his new book he illuminates the life and central importance of Lu Anne Henderson, Mary Lou of On the Road, Neal Cassady’s first wife, who largely narrates the book; Nicosia’s encyclopedic knowledge and rigorous documentation have enabled him to present what was just a box of cassette tapes as a riveting narrative with much of the drive and most of the action of On the Road, only with actual names and events. Whatever she can’t get exactly straight is smoothed out and corroborated by the author’s notes. Arriving in mid-40’s New York with her wild man husband, not quite on the lam from Denver but close enough, she cemented the bond between Neal and Jack, provided a harmonious and stabilizing element to their scene. While she had no literary aspirations, that was all her husband had; his hyper-energetic letters first gave Kerouac the idea that he could just write what he felt rather than pouring out a conventional novel. In addition to his appearances as Dean Moriarity, he can arguably be offered as an inspiration for R.P. McMurphy of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. ( He appeared on Kesey’s front lawn one day in 1960 and began tearing apart his broken down car, and later was famously the driver of the Furthur bus of the Merry Pranksters.) This mythologized group of misfits is made vivid, if not likeable, particularly in the early years before success brought notoriety. Cassady’s serial paternity and marrying, not always connected, left Lu Anne out of much of his later antics, but he continued to reach out to her until his early death, while she went on to a fairly interesting life of her own, managing a North Beach nightclub, among other things.

In an echo of the later wives of Jack Kerouac and their operatically grasping relatives, two of Cassady’s later wives have written memoirs that glorify their own roles to the diminishment of the truth. Nicosia’s Memory Babe, first published by Grove Press, was an exemplary airing of opinions and marshaling of facts. He has done a like service to the public with this book.

In his summation, Nicosia makes a strong case for the debt of every countercultural movement of the late 20th century to this unsung woman; though she passed away before the book came out, she had the satisfaction of knowing the story would be set straight, particularly because her input, through Nicosia, was channeled to Walter Salles, the director bringing On the Road to the screen. That’s one reason why it’s probably a good thing it took over 50 years for the thing to be filmed.