In 1941, Brierly met Neal Cassady, then a 15-year-old juvenile delinquent who would become a significant influence on the Beat writers and a countercultural icon in his own right [REF].
Cassady was introduced in 1946 to future Beat Generation literary icons Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg by another Brierly protégé, Hal Chase, who Brierly had helped place at Columbia University [REF].