Neal Cassady

AP EXCLUSIVE: LETTER THAT INSPIRED KEROUAC FOUND
BY JOHN ROGERS 
ASSOCIATED PRESS

  "It's been called the letter that launched a literary genre - 16,000 amphetamine-fueled, stream-of-consciousness words written by Neal Cassady to his friend Jack Kerouac in 1950... Kerouac described it this way: 'It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better'n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves.' "