One and Only

by Gerald Nicosia

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  NOTE TO THE TRANSCRIPTION

  Interview with Lu Anne

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  PART FOUR

  PART FIVE

  PART SIX

  Lu Anne’s Role in Beat History / Cultural History

  Al Hinkle’s Story

  Letter to Neal

  A Daughter’s Recollection by Anne Marie Santos

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  TO OUR READERS

  Copyright Page

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ONE AND ONLY

  “One and Only is essential reading for anyone wishing to get the full picture of the Beat Generation. Lu Anne Henderson was Neal Cassady’s lifelong love and was responsible for the friendship with Kerouac that gave us On the Road. Gerald Nicosia was always a loyal advocate of the women of the Beat Generation, and his remarkable interview with Lu Anne fills in an enormous gap in the story. It shows the vulnerability and insecurities of the main characters, and reveals the chaos of their emotional lives so that Kerouac and company finally emerge as real people! A great book.”

  —Barry Miles, author of Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats

  “Gerald Nicosia is Kerouac’s best biographer. Critics unanimously praised Memory Babe for its honesty, its broad, deep research, its narrative style, and its respect for and understanding of Jack Kerouac. Now he gives us a different kind of book in One and Only. I am fascinated by characters in fiction who live outside of the book and confront us in real life. Nicosia found Lu Anne Henderson and listened to her voice with great care. He’s written the context, made room so that she can tell her truth about On the Road. We go again but differently on that mythic road with Jack and Neal.”

  —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

  “One and Only is an ongoing chapter in the riveting Beat saga, chronicling another life and its poignant hopes and fears. An unsung teen-heroine of the time, Lu Anne Henderson, the young woman on whom the character ‘Marylou’ in On the Road is based, finally has her say. The book is an intimate and revealing portrait in the annals of American belletristic and real-life memory.”

  —Anne Waldman, author of Beats at Naropa and co-founder of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University

  “Gerald Nicosia performs a fascinating feat of balance with One and Only. While preserving his admiration for Jack Kerouac’s writing, he explores—with the collaboration of Anne Marie Santos and the preserved words of Lu Anne Henderson—the faults of character which contribute to an ambiguous cult status for Jack Kerouac and his beau ideal, Neal Cassady. The book is a most valuable addition to Kerouaciana and the legend of Neal Cassady. It also gives Lu Anne a place she deserves, and has not gotten from others.”

  —Herbert Gold, author of Bohemia

  “It takes a Zen-like skill to tightrope-walk the 60 years of complexity and rumor that lay across Beat legends Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Gerald Nicosia effortlessly performs the feat using his interviews with Cassady’s first wife, Lu Anne, as his point of entry. Nicosia has a historian’s vision that generously accommodates the ambivalences and Rashomon quality of memory. With a breezy and genuine beatitude, Nicosia renders the pre-On the Road Beat world with an admiration that doesn’t discount its occasional irony and fraud. One and Only is a book of masterful craft subversively camouflaged as coolly minimal in which the sophisticated tricks of the trade of fiction are used to tell a real story.”

  —Kate Braverman, author of Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, and Squandering the Blue

  “This is the missing back-story of the back-story of On the Road, the mysterious missing woman a lot of us sensed was there but invisible and silent. Until now. Nicosia has given her voice and made her visible, and she’s extraordinary. No wonder both Kerouac and Cassady loved her.”

  —Russell Banks, author of Cloudsplitter

  “Gerald Nicosia has done it again! He just keeps filling in the pieces of the Beat era for us. One and Only fleshes out the beginnings of On the Road and makes it fuller and more interesting. Lu Anne was certainly a force to be reckoned with. Her lust for life and fullness of being and generosity of spirit show through only too clearly. Her vital North Beach career, her mothering ability, her recovery from heroin addiction, her many marriages, her long clandestine affair with Neal, and her own longevity speak well for her love affair with life as well as with Neal. And her demand for a ‘broad margin to her life,’ showing she had ‘as much right to go through every open door as a man had,’ will strike many women as apt in their own lives. By the 60s, a number of us followed her. I read One and Only from cover to cover in one day, and Lu Anne’s presence hovers with me still.”

  —Joanna McClure, original Beat poet, author of Extended Love Poem

  “I read One and Only straight through and loved it, and loved the energy that was put into it. Lu Anne, much ignored by most of the biographers except Nicosia, finally comes across as a vital part of the Beat Generation. His new book is an informative and moving portrait of a girl who was really a lady, and lets us see once again how strong was the influence of womanhood on the major Beats, both negative and positive. One and Only is must reading and fills in many gaps. It will become an essential part of the Beat canon.”

  —Jerry Kamstra, original Beat poet, author of The Frisco Kid

  “Gerry Nicosia is to the Beat Generation what Alan Lomax was to the history of the blues, the voice-catcher of his generation. In One and Only, written in collaboration with Anne Marie Santos, Nicosia reveals the story behind the story of the great American epic, On the Road, which is to say he uncovers one of its deeply buried secrets. Every myth has one, and the great unknown force that brought Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady together is revealed here for the first time in the vivacious voice of the vixen Lu Anne Henderson. Reading her story is like riding with her in the backseat on one of those long, bluesy romps across the great heartland. Go, go, go...”

  —Phil Cousineau, author of Wordcatcher and The Book of Roads

  “The voice of Lu Anne Henderson rises up off the page in this tender yet psychologically acute memoir, transcribed by Gerald Nicosia from tapes he made thirty years ago. Henderson played a crucial, inspirational part in the lives of Cassady and Kerouac, and the true circumstances of their complex relationship are revealed here for the first time. One and Only also shows the poverty and chaos and sometimes the sheer scariness of the lives of the Beats. Above all, the book shows the vulnerability and lack of self-esteem, the confusion and jealousy, which lay behind Cassady and Kerouac’s machismo. Henderson’s crucial insight is that Cassady and Kerouac, despite their profound friendship, were ‘totally unaware of the other one’s real feelings,’ a situation which only got worse when they became cultural icons. This new book by Nicosia is an invaluable contribution to Beat history.”

  —Ian MacFadyen, editor of Naked Lunch at 50: Anniversary Essays

  “What a great and important find: Lu Anne Henderson, aka Marylou of On the Road. Neglected by most of the scholarship, she put Jack and Neal together, is at the core of the movement that changed history, both literary and cultural history. But only Eastern establishment scholars and male-identified fans could be stunned by her. For Westerners, childhood was full of such women—the mothers we grew from. Henderson’s authenticity is no surprise—is relief, joy, and truth. We owe thanks to Gerald Nicosia for the interestingly-crafted One and Only, a sweet book and a delightful, beautiful story that can never again be ignored.”

  —Sharon Doubiago, author of Love on the Streets

  “In One and Only,
Gerald Nicosia is a man burning with a story to tell like no other told before: the true story of the pre-legendary men and women upon whom the classic postwar novel On the Road’s characters were modeled. Nicosia’s sturdily edited portrait of Lu Anne Henderson from lengthy taped interviews and his dramatic and accurate narration of Lu Anne’s life amongst the ur-Beats and thereafter, with the help of her daughter Anne Santos, bring to light as never before the human dimensions of those lives before they were iconic. Lu Anne’s life was not about Neal Cassady or Kerouac or any of them; her story is her humanity. Now, with Gerald Nicosia’s One and Only, a master of living Beat history has brought to life for the first time a ‘Beat woman’ who was a woman, first of all.”

  —James Grauerholz, editor of Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

  “Just as the Beats were the missing link between the bohemians and the hippies, so was lovely Lu Anne the missing link between Cassady and Kerouac. In this book, she reveals how they played the roles that were expected of them, and then expected by themselves, until finally their roles began to play them. Gerald Nicosia provides a backstage pass to a unique era of foibles and follies that range from poignant to preposterous, so that One and Only does indeed live up to its name.”

  —Paul Krassner, author of Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture

  “I always sensed Lu Anne was Neal’s real sweetheart. He always had a special look on his face when he mouthed her name. Having been an intimate of major players in that generation, I am drawn to anecdotal, primary narratives like One and Only. For me, they’re more interesting than the fictions like On the Road. One and Only reveals a good deal about the gene pool in that fabulous era. In Lu Anne’s life, as in the larger culture, cool changed from hep to hip. This book reveals the spark, in flesh, of another holder of the flame.”

  —Charles Plymell, author of The Last of the Moccasins and friend of Neal Cassady

  “One and Only is an essential addition and corrective to the masculine locus of Beat Generation history. Lu Anne Henderson was a witness and participant in the legendary road trips and saw Neal Cassady, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs in a clear-headed light. Nicosia’s reclamation of her centrality to that experience is revelatory. Her testimony captures her complicated involvement with these men with clarity, compassion, and wise humor. This book is a necessary revelation of the female experience in postwar United States, not to mention the incredible story and insights into the times covered by On the Road and also the period afterward.”

  —David Meltzer, original Beat poet, author of San Francisco Beats: Talking with the Poets

  “There have always been great women behind the important men of our collective literary existence. Lu Anne Henderson (Cassady) was the apocalyptic spark behind the rowdy duo of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. According to the new book One and Only by Gerald Nicosia, a vital addition to the historical archives of Beat consciousness, Neal and Jack didn’t get along with each other before Lu Anne connected them. Nicosia, one of our most important Beat chroniclers, here delves into places other researchers have left untouched. One and Only exposes the liveliness and magnetic charms of a beautiful woman with a beautiful soul, who led a fascinating yet problematic life.”

  —Tony Rodriguez, author of When I Followed the Elephant

  “In One and Only, Gerald Nicosia treats Jack Kerouac with the respect he has always shown for this great writer, just as he has always been a friend and supporter of the real Kerouac family. It’s an extremely well-done book, in which we see the On the Road story through other people’s eyes, in a way that is sometimes painful and sometimes humorous, but always definitely real. In Jack Kerouac’s own spirit, Nicosia gives us the full, no-holds-barred telling of a story we only heard parts of before.”

  —Paul Blake, Jr., Jack Kerouac’s nephew

  To my very own Doris Day

  Mother, I love you. “Que sera, sera.”

  —A.M.S.

  To Sylvia Anna Fremer Nicosia,

  known as “San,”

  and all the mothers who try to make

  a better world for their children

  —G.N.

  We’ll be together, you are my one and only wife.

  —Neal Cassady to Lu Anne Cassady

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Of course, my first thanks go out to the spirit of Lu Anne Henderson Cassady. If she hadn’t granted me those two interviews, neither this book nor a whole lot else would exist. Thanks of course to Larry Lee, too, another angel who got his wings the hard way. It was Larry’s act of kindness in sharing Lu Anne’s whereabouts with me that opened the door for me with her in the first place. A big thanks to Walter Salles and the entire cast and crew of the movie On the Road. If Walter hadn’t asked me to be part of the initial work on that film, I would not have listened again to that full seven-and-a-half-hour taped interview, which had been locked up in an archive in Lowell, Massachusetts, for many years, beyond everyone’s reach. My work as an advisor to Walter and other crew members, especially Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, and Garrett Hedlund, helped me focus my own thoughts about Lu Anne.

  There is no way I can adequately express my enormous debt to Lu Anne’s daughter, Anne Marie Santos, who allowed me to put my brief experience with Lu Anne in a far larger and longer context. By the same token, I have to thank Al Hinkle and his daughter Dawn Hinkle Davis for their great generosity in sharing stories that added vastly to the richness of the narrative. My editor and publisher, Brenda Knight, was a sine qua non of this project, as were the core staff members of Cleis Press and its co-publishers Felice Newman and Frédérique Delacoste. Thanks to so many others who contributed photographs and other key pieces of the puzzle—including, especially, photographers Jerry Bauer, James Oliver Mitchell, and Larry Keenan, Jr., who by themselves and on little funding documented a wide swath of America’s germinating counterculture. Thanks to my family, of course—Ellen, Amy, and Peter—for support and patience during my work on the book. And thanks most of all to the angelic spirits of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady—not for getting us all into this mess, but for showing us the beginning of a way out. Pax vobi-scum to that whole ragtag bunch called the Beat Generation.

  —G.N.

  First thank-you goes to Gerry Nicosia for reaching out to me and guiding me through this amazing experience.

  To Brenda Knight and all those at Cleis Press and Viva Editions who believed in this project.

  Thank you to my love Reuben (TT&F), to Katie, Erin, Mason, and Mia, without whom I could not exist.

  To all the women in my family who came before, onward we go.

  Most importantly, to Mother and my daughter Melissa, the bravest and most loving of women, and I was the lucky one loved by both. Thank you.

  —Annie Ree

  INTRODUCTION

  THE NECESSARY ESTROGEN

  Back in 1978, when I was traveling around the country doing interviews for my biography Memory Babe, there was a lot going on in the Kerouac realm. New Kerouac biographies were in the works by both Dennis McNally and the team of Barry Gifford and Larry Lee, but the hottest action was going on down in Hollywood—the filming of Carolyn Cassady’s memoir Heart Beat with such stars as Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, and John Heard. I counted myself lucky to be a friend of Carolyn’s, and through her I wangled an invitation to the set down in Culver City in early October of that year. I had just missed seeing my new friend Jan Kerouac, Jack’s daughter, there. I’d also managed to connect her and Carolyn, so that Jan got a bit part in the film—a part that was, unbelievably, left on the cutting-room floor. Jan was working on a memoir too, as were Jack’s ex-wives Edie Parker and Joan Haverty, as well as his quondam girlfriends Joyce Johnson and Helen Weaver. The women were surfacing, though it would be almost two more decades before they got their due in Brenda Knight’s landmark book, Women of the Beat Generation, as well as Richard Peabody’s lesser-known but equally important A Different Beat. One woman had notably been absent from
all this neo-Beat hullabaloo, the woman every Kerouac fan knew as “Marylou” from On the Road: Lu Anne Henderson Cassady. No one had heard from her in a long time. No one seemed to know where to find her.

  Then one day, while I was still out in California, I got a call from Larry Lee. Larry deserves remembering here. A Peabody-award-winning journalist for KRON television in the Bay Area, he was one of the first prominent gay men in San Francisco to die from that epidemic that would take so many thousands of lives out here—including, a little later, the tremendous writer Randy Shilts. It troubles me to see how quickly Larry Lee’s name has been forgotten in the Bay Area, and how people now routinely ask “Who?” when his name is mentioned. Time buries us all, but maybe those who die young get buried quicker, having had less time to leave a testament to their memory.

  Larry was short, slender, with a walrus mustache and a pixieish smile. But his brown eyes could burn into you when he was after some critical information. He had one of the sharpest minds I had yet encountered, and he was nobody’s fool. But one thing stands out about him in my memory more than any other. Of all the Kerouac critics, scholars, and biographers running around then—and running in ever larger numbers nowadays, in veritable wolf packs, in fact—he was the only totally noncompetitive one I knew. Maybe he could afford to be noncompetitive because he was a journalist, only on the periphery of those bloody fields of literary combat, where every writer seems out to climb a step higher on the backs of his brothers. But I don’t really think that was it. Larry was just a kind man—that was the essential thing about him. When I first came out to the Bay Area and had no money to live on, he cashed a check for me that no one else would touch. When you looked at his face, you saw some past hurt there that had left him with a deep compassion for the whole human race, but I never knew him well enough to find out what that hurt had been.