User:Arms & Hearts/The First Third

The First Third is the autobiography of the Beat Generation icon Neal Cassady, published posthumously in 1971 by San Francisco, California-based publisher City Lights Books. Cassady is best known as the inspiration for Dean Moriarty, the catalyst for the events of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and appeared under various names in the works of Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, John Clellon Holmes and Ken Kesey. Despite his regular appearances in the works of others, The First Third was Cassady's only published work (barring two volumes of letters).

Prologue
In editions published since 1981, a prologue is included at the beginning of the book. It deals with the history of Cassady's family prior to his birth, including the death of his great uncle at the hands of his grandfather, and the early life of his father. Cassady senior's life in Des Moines, Iowa is featured, and included two spells as a barber, time spent in the United States Army during World War I, and his entry to civilized society after receiving a broken nose from a policeman who wrongly accuses him of breaking and entering.

Cassady then goes on to describe his mother's side of his genealogy, including his maternal grandfather Otto Scheuer's passage to America. Scheuer becomes friends with a Swedish man named Rasmus Svensen after saving him in a fight, and lives with him and his family in New Jersey "for half a year or more". Scheuer then moves to Duluth, Minnesota with monetary aid from Svensen, works for a steamboat company on the Great Lakes, and fathers four children, including Cassady's mother, Maude Jean Scheuer.

Maude Scheuer marries James Kenneth Daly, a rich and prominent lawyer who becomes Mayor of Sioux City, Iowa. The couple have two children, but Daly dies in 1922, "just before a second election", and a widowed Maude begins to attend Sunday concerts, where she meets Neal Cassady, sr. Maude gives birth to her ninth child, Neal's first, who is named after his father. In October 1929, however, the Wall Street Crash takes place, and the Great Depression ensues.

The family move to Denver, Colorado, but their deteriorating finances and Scheuer's sons' resentment of their stepfather combine and cause a rift in Maude and Neal's marriage. They eventually separate, and Neal and Neal, jr. are left alone and homeless.

The prologue was originally published in Ken Kesey's journal Spit in the Ocean in 1981, shortly before City Lights Books published an expanded edition of The First Third including the prologue and other miscellaneous texts not included in the earlier editions.

Chapter I
The first chapter predominantly chronicles Cassady's relationship with his father, his early life as a homeless child among a world dominated by adults, and the effects that these experiences had on his later life.