110
PARTISAN REVIEW
Cassady, who had been educa ted on Den ver's ski d row, where he ea rned
an advanced degree in brutality and depriva ti o n , was vulnera bl e to
learning, and Gin sberg knew how to ga in leverage over him with
demonstra ti ons of Columbi a eruditi on . T he lellcrs reveal the emo–
tional quid pro quo of homosexua lity, the g ive and ta ke of power tha t
became for Ginsberg the very prin cip le of psychi c accounting, by
whi ch hi s pa rano ia and sense of persecuti on could give way to
propheti c
~xalta ti on.
His la ter messiani sm came out o f hi s earl y
masochi sm, hi s transcendence out o f hi s lessons in a basement. But in
their rela tion ship Ginsberg was always the pursuer and Cassady the
pursued. Cassady was, after all , ma rried during mos t of thi s period,
three times, in fact, and always seemed to have a woman in tow.
It is easy to understand the appea l o f Cassady for someone like
Ginsberg, though Cassady's magic does n ot come through in the
letters . He was not an intell ectual o r even a reader; he tri ed to write and ,
for the most part, failed , and even hi s lellers are garbl ed . " I ha te
words ," he confessed to Ginsberg. "They are too much ." Even then ,
some of the autobi ographi cal fragments co ll ected in hi s sole book,
Th e
First Third,
are fascin atin g fo r the life they describe. Wha t captiva ted
Ginsberg and Kerouac was the rough and ready masculinity, the pose
of compl ete male competence. They were Reichi ans, and he was their
man of raw libido, a t ease with hi s sexua l urges, undisturbed by
homosexuality though a success with women , and untempt ed by the
appea ls of comfo rt and responsibility. Al so, he was almos t a dead
ringer for Kerouac, whi ch surely pl ayed into the la tter's exa lted
con ception of him. Kerouac turned him into a myth through the
superhuman fi gures of Dean Moria rty and Cody Pomeray; Gary Sn yder
saw him as the las t cowboy, a Jededi ah Smith entrapped by the
encircling modern world; Gin sberg just loved him. He was their link to
fronti er manhood, their own ho trod buckaroo, tho ugh they understood
too tha t hi s skid row di sorienta ti on was an ali ena ti on no t unlike their
own. He was born to lose. After hi s marri age to hi s second wife,
Carolyn , in 1949, he wro te to Ginsberg , " From wh a t I ca n understand
of them your doldrums a re fin e. All I can see is the lo ng, continuo us
doldrum I'm in ." By mean s of fas t ca rs, fas t living, and women , h e was
always in fli ght from the do ldrums, and , thanks to Kerouac, hi s
freneti c journeying became hi s contributi o n to litera ture. He intro–
duced Kerouac
to
an authenti c Ameri can hi gh , the hi gh of the o pen
road , the ecs tali c illusion o f omni potence one gets during an all-night
drive across the endl ess plains, with the radi o luned in to h alf th e
country. The rolling cadenzas of
On th e R oad
owe everything to
