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    One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road
    One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road
    One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road
    Ebook261 pages4 hours

    One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road

    By Gerald Nicosia

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Beloved by both Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, Lu Anne Henderson’s story has never been told. Lu Anne was a beautiful 15-year-old girl in Denver in 1945 when she met Neal, a fast-talking hurricane of male sexuality and vast promises. The two married, and soon they were hanging out with a group of would-be writers, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. But Neal and Jack initially didn’t like each other very much. Lu Anne taught them how to love each other — in effect, making the Beat Generation possible, as well as giving Kerouac material for one of the seminal novels of the 20th century, On the Road. One and Only traces the immense struggles of Lu Anne’s own life, which ranged from the split-up of her family to the ravages of abusive men, lingering illness, and the grief of losing the two most important men in her life. Lu Anne Henderson did not live to see the filming of On the Road by Walter Salles, but One and Only tells how Twilight’s Kristen Stewart, through her work with both Nicosia and Anne Marie Santos (Lu Anne's daughter), came to find the key to playing Lu Anne in the film.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherViva Editions
    Release dateNov 1, 2011
    ISBN9781936740093

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    Reviews for One and Only

    4/5

    15 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Saddest damn book I ever read. Tears were rolling down my face at the end at the sad fate of Jack and Neal -- Jack turned into a hopeless alcoholic calloused over and trying to feel nothing inside, and Neal transformed from American legendary living hero into Ken Kesey's dancing bear.

      And it was caused by Jack's genius. That the horrible irony. The better he wrote,the worse their fates would get.

      The book is based a long interview with LuAnn Henderson (the Mary Lou of the story)and remains true to its origins. It's spoken in her voice. She skips around and doubles back to thoughts she's already had like real people do. And she's retelling a story On The Road readers already know very well, but from her woman's perspective.

      LuAnn went through four husbands herself, became a junkie for a while but cleaned up, ran nightclubs in North Beach San Francisco, had a whole big life of her own. She maintained a friendship with them both to the end and tells the tragic story of their decline as she saw it. Her daughter writes the last part.

      It's just a heartbreaking book, but essential to anyone who has been affected by Kerouac's writing.
      I'm still sort of stunned this morning. But it's a good stunned.
    • 5/5
      Reading this after finishing a re-read of On the Road was one of the best decisions I ever made in my reading life.

      Reading On the Road one can't help but thinking: What was going through that girl's head? What drew her in to that crazy, high strung crowd?...Well, this book has the answer. In the words of Lu Anne Henderson "Marylou" herself.

      Lu Anne was fierce, she was larger than life, and getting to understand her was absolutely wonderful. As a young, relatively-sheltered, woman I can't help but to marvel at her independence and zest for life. She wanted to live and to love and that's what she did, she went for it! How many of us can say the same?

      Absolutely loved reading the bits about shooting the movie and all the many wonderful people that were involved in it. I have high hopes that it will acurately portray the journey that inspired generations.
    • 4/5
      An interesting tale told in a unique voice that demonstrates the often deliberate cattiness characteristic of women fighting with a rival. However, like most biographies, only people interested in these players would truly enjoy these stories, hence only 4 stars. If you have a love for Kerouac, the Beats or American cultural history this is a great book -- but without knowing anything about Kerouac or the Beats one would get lost in the numerous references. I find the segment written by Lu Anne's daughter to be a better companion piece to Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road." While we do get a better understanding of the bond between Cassady and Lu Anne what I found most intriguing was the unrequited love story of Jack and Lu Anne; too bad that story had never been written. I would like to know the backstory of this book as to why it took so long to get this into print after the interviews... was it to capitalize on the forthcoming movie? (While interesting and I can understand the reasoning I found the plugs for the forthcoming movie tiresome -- except in the Santos' interview) Or what produced the lawsuit between the author and the University?
    • 3/5
      Interesting for those who are deep into the Kerouac/Beat mythology but less so for those who do not have that interest or context
    • 4/5
      Since audio books are a very small part of my "reading," I was stunned to discover I had requested this book. That said, the readers were good, although I did grow tired of Luann's patter by the fourth CD. I also was able to see the pictures (and they are great, but there are a lot of Luann as a child and her background is not really covered in the book). If there were opening chapters to the book on that first disk, I never got them to open. This is a genuine long song to the "Beat Generation" and, as such, it is worth the read (or the hearing).
    • 3/5
      I received this audio book and my husband grabbed it for a road trip to North Dakota. He liked her but didn't know why. Still doesn't !What I found was that Lu Anne opened my eyes to a generation of change I was unaware of. Now I want to learn more. Women of her generation had little options. Virgin or Whore. It was as if she just went where the next door opened. I was angry at her and frustrated by her actions, she was a child and seemed to remain one though out her life. I finally found compassion for her, through her daughter, at the end of her life. I am still mad at her...I wanted her to be more.
    • 4/5
      I received the audio unbridged version of the book for review.Scores of people have read the Beat masterpiece On The Road, and countless others have read the actual biographies of the 'saintly' heroes whose exploits fill the novels pages. Forgotten along the way was the female companion who went along, and played a pivotal role in the adventure. One And Only: The Untold Story of On The Road does just this. The story of Lu Anne Henderson as Mary Lou is one worthy of further exploration. The authors assert that Lu Anne was essentially the glue in which Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady became stuck. The book is full of surprising anecdotes about Lu Anne's recollection of the time she spent with both men. And is overall a great asset to the study of Beat Culture as a whole.The book itself only briefly talks about Lu Anne during the time periods outside of her involvement with the world Beat Generation....from the portion of the book written be her daughter you glean more information about her life as an independent woman and mother. Lu Anne seems to be a fascinating subject for biography. Her recollection of her experiences with Carolyn Cassady and how her perception and personal truth is very different that how she has been portrayed in Carolyn's writings about the same events. Lu Anne loved unabashedly and this came through in the reading, she grabbed onto the experiences of life and road them to their ultimate conclusion.....The most amazing story she tells in my opinion is very simple. It is the story of two drunken souls dancing. When she dances with Jack Kerouac he became in her words as Nijinsky lifting the teenage Lu Anne in a ballet of their own creation. I really connected to this passage because everyone has had the experience with someone where they feel so connected , yet out of place and time with every other person around. Conversely is you haven't had this experience it is one worth striving for.If you like the Beat Generation you should read this one....
    • 5/5
      This book IS an untold story. There are people arguing with that statement, because we have other viewpoints of the trip and the book and the people involved. Lu Anne's story, however, was untold up to this point, and it's nice to finally get to know her. This book does fill a gap in the ever-popular and crowded beat genre.The interview material from which this book sprang has been well-edited. It still feels like real, spoken words but is easy to read (unlike most transcribed interviews).The audio edition is truly wonderful. Due to being disabled the bulk of my reading is done through audio books, and I know just how many mediocre and truly dreadful readers there are. Vanessa Hart reads this SO wonderfully. She truly makes it sound like you're listening to her personal story. Stephen Bowlby also does a good job, but his job on this book was much easier and more standard, so it shines less brightly than Hart's work. I couldn't view the file of photos either, but I don't really care about that.
    • 2/5
      This book-on-CD was disappointing to me. While it was kind of interesting to get a fresh viewpoint of the whole Beat scene, I found myself growing bored with the constant repetition in Lu Anne's narrative. I think the author failed her in this endeavor. Although I understand that he wanted to stay true to Lu Anne's "voice", I still feel Nicosia should have done some serious editing to make it more listenable. In the end, I just wanted to read some Kerouac instead.
    • 5/5
      One and Only is the essential, long-missing tale of the young woman who captured the hearts of Cassady and Kerouac when they first got on the road. Though the bulk of the book is an edited transcription of a seven-hour taped interview Henderson offered Nicosia, Nicosia does offer his unique insights into the psyches and emotions of the key players of the Beat Generation. It’s a must-read for any Beat fan.
    • 3/5
      First, the format: I had a few technical problems with the audio format for this book. For some reason I was unable to view the file of photos it was supposed to contain. Additionally, the last CD had something wrong with it, making it impossible for me to hear the end of the book, (not to mention the fact that one of the readers' voices was hard for me to listen to.) Obviously these things made my experience with this book more frustrating than it could have been. I ended up driving to a bookstore, finding a print copy of the book, and looking at the photos and reading the last part of the book there.Second, the content: Being largely unexperienced with (but wishing to become more educated about) the Beat generation, I decided to familiarize myself with the story before reading On the Road, thereby making One and Only my introduction to Kerouac and Cassady. Such a situation hardly makes me the target audience for the book, although I did enjoy the familiar tone. While much of the book was captivating, it got repetitive often enough to be irritating as well. Vacillating between interest and boredom, I ended up being glad the book wasn't very long, albeit simultaneously happy for the ease in which the information was delivered. It was almost more exposé than memoir, more rebuttal than biography, but I'm happy to have listened to the book and be that much more familiar with the people involved.
    • 4/5
      Gerald Nicosia has been down this road before. He's authored a few books about Kerouac, often filling them with flowery prose.His contribution to this biography is no different.In 1978, he visited Lu Anne Henderson in order to tape record an interview with her. Thirty years later, Nicosia has realized the importance of the interview, and HighBridge Publishers have released the results as an audio book, giving a voice (as read by Vanessa Hart) to the girl who went on the road with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady.For his part, Nicosia does what is expected. He adores his subject and places her as the heroine of the story. By reflecting on Henderson's role in cultural history, Nicosia asserts that she was a begetter of the Beat Generation due to her unique link between the two beat icons.Nicosia's research of Henderson's life after her famous road trip is quite thorough, but occasionally he punctuates it with some tawdry language, thus giving her personality an underlying tone of the Madonna/Whore complex and making his observations of her and Cassady's unconventional lifestyle read like a cheap sex-exposé.What keeps you listening is the interview itself, which reveals Henderson's powers of observation. She treats us to a casual sit down, reminiscing about her first hand experiences mentioned in On the Road and John Clellon Holmes' Go.While harking back to her days of frantic youth, her keen insight expands upon the public personas of the characters found in most beat books, making this a nice companion piece to them. She also speaks of the aftermath following the publication of Kerouac's book. Hers is a heartbreaking tale of two men whose lives (his and Cassady's) were intertwined due to their shared quest for a pure life and the dream of becoming writers.According to Henderson, a dramatic change occurred in both men after being dubbed cultural icons of the Beat Generation. Such a burden chipped away at their emotional strength, and one could argue contributed to their own demise.It's when I hear these very personal, and intuitive, insights that I am thankful that Lu Anne Henderson took the time to share her past, letting us in for quite a ride.

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    One and Only - Gerald Nicosia

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