Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation including Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs and many others, continue to resonate through the world's cultures to this day, including numerous annual festivals, conferences, multiple major motion pictures and never-ending allusions in songs. One of Jack & the Beats biggest and most direct influences was on the Merry Pranksters, and their house-band the Grateful Dead.
Pretty much all the members of the group and all the original Merry Pranksters weigh in here on the matter, giving explicit credit to, in particular, the book "On The Road" and the person of Neal Cassady as changing their lives.
The title piece includes accounts and observations by Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Robert Hunter, Paul Krassner, Ken Babbs, Dennis McNally, Robert Stone, Sterling Lord (both Kerouac & Kesey's literary agent) and Paul Foster, plus new interviews with Wavy Gravy, Mountain Girl, George Walker, Anonymous, Roy Sebern, Mary Microgram & Kesey biographer Robert Faggen.
Original Prankster George "Hardly Visible" Walker wrote both an Introduction and a colorful remembrance of his many years & Adventures with Neal Cassady - the unique American hero who drove both Kerouac's car and Kesey's bus.
Also featured in this "Lonesome Traveller"-like collection are Adventure Tales set at:
- the historic Beat Shindig put on by The Beat Museum in San Francisco in 2015;
- three premieres of the movie "On The Road" - in London, Toronto and New York;
- the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival;
- the Kesey Bus and nouveau Pranksters at Yasgur's farm during a Woodstock anniversary;
- Prankster "Family Reunions" that are still blazing to this day;
- a typical current Beat show at The Bitter End in New York City;
- a magic moment with Phil Lesh at his Terrapin Crossroads club in San Rafael;
> The book also has 60 photographs illuminating all of these different Adventure Tales.
This is a follow-up to the author's previous book, "The Hitchhiker's Guide To Jack Kerouac" - written in the same voice and published in the same style - taking the story Furthur. "Hitchhiker's" was about the largest gathering of Beats and company ever staged - Boulder 1982 - with Ginsberg, Burroughs, Holmes, Corso, Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, George Walker, Ken Babbs, and the Grateful Dead playing three shows at Red Rocks in the middle of it.
These collected stories and essays take that Adventure into the 21st century with many of the same characters still weaving magic in the present day - including author Brian Hassett, and original Merry Prankster George Walker, touring the continent performing live Kerouac & Cassady shows at festivals, museums, clubs, bookstores & libraries.
The presence of the Beats in the Pranksters has been a part of their mindset since before Neal Cassady ever pulled up in Ken Kesey's driveway on Perry Lane in 1962 - how that happened is revealed for the first time in this book. But no one has ever written about the connection in depth until now.
To a man and a woman, the living Pranksters were eager to talk about it, and those who have sadly left us, left behind some colorful insights into the connection, and how one grew out of the other in the fertile garden of mis-'60s San Francisco.
The only time Kerouac ever met Kesey - which was also the last time Jack & Neal ever saw each other - was a party in Manhattan in June 1964. This book has the largest collection of firsthand accounts of that historic event ever assembled in print.
There are some Pranksterish Beat stories . . . and some Beat-infused Prankster adventures. This is those worlds merged into one - each alive in the other.
The book is both scholarly and fun. It's printed in a large font so it's easy to read. And it moves as fast as Cassady