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NEAL_AND_JOAN


                                              August 14, 2005

From "Neal Cassady Collected Letters, 1944-1967"

Letter to Allen Ginsberg, 
dated March 15, 1949
San Francisco:      
     
  "Joan is brittle, blasé 
  brittleness is her forte.          
  With sharpened laughs and     
  dainty oblique statements she                   
  fashions the topic at hand.                  
  You know these things, I need         
  not elaborate. But you ask             But of        
  for an angle, well, Julie's            course not.
  hair is matted with dirt I am                                     
  told; oh fuck it, normal                                           
  disinitegration of continued                      (Ginsberg asked 
  habit patterns (child raising                     for an "angle"?)
  here) has Joan laboring in a               
  bastardized world wherein the             
  supply of benzedrine completly       
  conditions her reaction to         
  everyday life. ETC. I love her."
  
              -- p. 116          
                             

             Note:
                 
             Cassady had visited Joan & WB           
             in New Waverly Texas in '47.                   
             Here he seems to be just           Or maybe he was             
             relaying hearsay a few years       making it clear             
             later?  ("I am told").             he doesn't feel             
                                                up little girl's 
             Or had Cassady passed              heads.                      
             through and seen her again                        
             more recently?  Maybe check                       
             "The First Third", I guess.
                                                       
                 Or for that matter, "On the Road",
                 That begins in the late forties 
                 time frame... 

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