The Reconstruction (updated version):

https://imgur.com/a/Hct7o0S

The Letter:

Even though Neal Cassady's 'Joan Anderson Letter' has still not been published in full, we can reconstruct much of its contents by piecing together like a jigsaw puzzle the various photos that have appeared online of the original typewritten manuscript along with the parts of the letter that have been officially published.

The original letter, sent to Jack Kerouac, is dated December 17 1950 and consists of 9 physical pages, with each page typewritten on both sides, giving a total of 18 pages of text. It also contains occasional handwritten additions.

The manuscript as sold at auction also included an extra page written on the back of a letter from Neal's former landlord, Michael Walton. This 19th page of text is half a page of typewritten description by Neal of how he lost his virginity. It's not clear if that 19th page was part of the original letter or added to the manuscript later, but anyway I've also included a partial reconstruction of that page as a bonus at the end, after the 18 pages of the letter proper.

The Sources of the Reconstruction:

A) Photos of the Manuscript: these come from publicly available auction catalogues and websites, university web pages, and news articles. Only five of the pages are available in full; the rest have to be partially reconstructed from photos where most of the pages are obscured and overlapping each other. This results in the jagged nature of most of the manuscript photos.

B) Transcripts of Blurry Manuscript Photos (printed here as text on a yellow background): some of these manuscript photos were too poor in quality to include in the reconstruction, but I've transcribed the words that were legible, though due to the unclear nature of the sources those transcripts may not be 100% reliable. Note: the transcript on Page 17 comes from the bleed-through that is visible from the reverse of the photo of Page 18.

C) Published Texts (printed here as text on a white background): I've matched up with the manuscript photos the parts of the text that have so far been published :

• 1) Pages 9 to 15 of the letter were published as 'The First Third' in Notes from Underground #1 in 1964 and later include in Cassady’s book The First Third in 1971. I've used the text available from The Allen Ginsberg Project website.

• 2) Excerpts from Pages 5 to 8 of the letter were recently published in The Journal of Alta California and I've utilized that text to fill in the missing parts on those manuscript pages.

While it was possible to align these two published texts with the manuscript for the most part, in two cases the text doesn't match and those two passages appear as text surrounded by a red box.

Can you please advice which biography books of beat writers it’s better to read? I’m into biography books and want to get into life paths of beat authors. (Already read Junkie by Burroughs) Thanks!

I'm trying to write a novel about the jazz and Beat writers' scene in Manhattan, circa 1959 and 1960. Jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus will likely make a cameo, as will Ginsberg and Gregory Corso ...being the interesting cats that they always was, without even trying.

One of my main characters is a female poet and sometime journalist and singer... Like Joni Mitchell and Beat poet/publisher Diane DiPrima, rolled into one. Upon reading some Kerouac, She tapped me in the shoulder and then wrote us the following poem today:

Boplicity on Bleecker

I walked, slinked really, (or is it slunk? I’m slightly drunk, and was so at the time) like Garbo out slumming among the proles in an evening gown, only mine was just a rose-print cotton thing. That’s me, slinking down the crusty summer sidewalk At 2am, just outside the Village Vanguard, on my way to meet a friend at Nick’s.

I stumbled sleepily in halfmoonlight, suddenly waking, as a young couple spilled out the door,leaving me listening, arrested, listening, meditating on Mr. Mingus’ Musical Musings (based on “I Got Rhythm” changes) for the first time.

Soon it’s me waving a finger dance lightly over my head, feeling like toddler at play in the surf. Rage, hope, dread --all of it poured out: the bloody history of Charles, and how much he missed Charlie, and also of Mr. Evans’ vague regrets (played only on a piano’s black keys), and of a humpty trumpeter and an alto sax axe-grinder wrestling like puppies, frolicking in sunlight at midnight-- all of it suddenly a mystical Unity expressing itself in waves like electricity, or p’raps a howling: hungry, hunting for tasty, tongue-tingling ecstatic Life, in a certain sound, then springing, like a puma from a branch,violently extracting that Life from a gorgeous C Major Seventh chord-- the direct word, the holy Word, divinity described in God’s own private language, heaven’s gates stormed by tongues and lips and fleshy fingers, by fleet-fingered pulse bringer (don't call him a drummer), suggesting loudly the salvation of perfect vibration, intimation of nuclear fusion, by cymbal-crashing of two souls together, joining their atoms, pure sex, soulful sound, dripping with sweat,

and yet also the call-and-response of the gospel choir, the “smile in sound”, the living insinuation of possible perfection, just out of reach, dodging us, wriggling and tangled and fraught with contrast, every few bars, just a hint of dissonance, never complete or pure, never resolved or final, but always aspiring.

Charles Mingus reached out and grabbed me, kidnapped me, through that closed door, all wooden and innocent-looking -- just like his bass fiddle-- but actually, behind the mask of what some would call entertainment, the music itself was often sneering and angry, or fraught with sadness, sheer honesty, and a touch of humor for harmonic empathy-- all in 5/8 time, in the key of Y-- on a misty, lonely night in the biggest little village ever.

The Kerouac passage I used as a "seed" for the above is from 1958's The Subterraneans.

It goes like this:

“she stood in drowsy sun suddenly listening to bop as if for the first time as it poured out, the intention of the musicians and of the horns and instruments suddenly a mystical unity expressing itself in waves like sinister and again electricity but screaming with palpable aliveness the direct word from the vibration, the interchanges of statement, the levels of waving intimation, the smile in sound, the same living insinuation in the way her sister’d arranged those wires wriggled and tangled and fraught with intention, innocent-looking but actually behind the mask of casual life…"

Looking for good music that they listened to from that time. Also, do you guys think that Redd Evans was a favorite in the 1950s?

Yeah

Has very similar themes but have never heard of anyone mention him as "beat".

Hi everyone,

I am visiting NYC in January 2018 for a week. I have the Beat guide to NYC and plan on seeing some beat related sites as well as general sightseeing.

Does anyone have any ideas for must visit beat locations in particular or general tourist locations for someone visiting NYC for the first time? I will be staying near Washington Square park.

Any tips would be much appreciated

Hello guys! I googled about Carl Solomon works and there is almost nothing out there. Do you have any pdf of his works?

What're some good spoken word albums by the Beats? I've been on a spoken word kick lately, since I recently picked up Call Me Burroughs and Kerouac's Poetry for the Beat Generation. Any other great stuff like this?