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25 CASSADY, Neal. Collection of letters signed to Justin Brierly. 4 January 1943 – 26 March 1945 “This is all far back, when dean was not the way he is today, when he was a young jailkid shrouded in mystery” A collection of autograph and typescript letters from a teenage Neal Cassady, Beat icon and the model for Dean Moriarty in On the Road . The letters were all written to Cassady’s friend and mentor, Justin Brierly, a significant number while Cassady was serving a sentence at the Colorado State Reformatory. They are the earliest surviving Cassady letters known, five of which remain unpublished. The archive also likely constitutes the largest such collection in private hands. On the Road opens with the narrator’s report of “Dean’s legendary “jailkid” origins: “First reports of him came to me through Chad King, who’d shown me a few letters from him written in a New Mexico reform school. I was tremendously interested in the letters because they so naively and sweetly asked Chad to teach him all about Nietzsche and all the wonderful intellectual things that Chad knew. At one point Carlo and I talked about the letters and wondered if we would ever meet the strange Dean Moriarty. This is all far back, when Dean was not the way he is today, when he was a young jailkid shrouded in mystery.” At turns poignant, vulnerable, defiant, beseeching, grateful, and funny, this
exceptional archive of juvenile correspondence sheds light on a pivotal period in Cassady’s youth, and Brierly’s impact on it. Brierly was a prominent member of Denver society, noted both as a patron of the performing arts in Colorado and for his efforts to place promising young misfits in highly regarded universities. He first met Cassady in 1941, when the rebellious 15-year-old was living with Brierly’s uncle. Brierly took an active role in Cassady’s life over the next few years, helping him get into high school, encouraging and supervising his reading, and finding employment for him. Cassady was introduced in 1946 to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg by another Brierly protégé, Hal Chase (“Chad King” in On the Road ), whom Brierly had helped place at Columbia University. Kerouac met Brierly in 1947 during a trip to see Cassady in Denver, and established a friendship with him. In 1950, Brierly wrote an article for the Denver Post about Kerouac’s debut novel The Town and the City , and organized a book signing for him in Denver. Kerouac in turn immortalized Brierly as “Denver D. Doll” in On the Road, “Justin G. Mannerly” in Visions of Cody, and “Manley Mannerly” in Book of Dreams . The collection includes a critically important letter, devoted entirely to Cassady’s “analizeing [ sic ] the influence you have had on my mind, character, temperament & in general my attitude & reaction to life”. Cassady references his voracious reading, praising Dickens, Twain, Thomas Wolfe, and Voltaire, updates Brierly on his self-development, and brags of his eloquence: “I shall not use a public defender as I feel my forceful oratory shall either carry the day for me, or put me where days aren’t important”.
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