A writer solely by virtue of his enormous will to become one, whose output consisted chiefly of letters to his friends, Neal Cassady was one of the people most responsible for the literary and cultural movement known as the Beat Generation. In the late 1940s, Cassady provided the young writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and John Clellon Holmes with a living example of a way of life and thought they had not encountered in academic circles. Rather than pondering what course to take, the spontaneous Cassady followed each road as it appeared; and his travels never ceased, both on real highways and on paths to increased awareness, such as literary and religious studies and the use of mind-altering drugs. Cassady's seemingly limitless energy and capacity for experience encouraged the spokesmen of the Beat Generation to test laws and limitations commonly placed upon human behavior and to articulate a...