 It was two years after Kerouac had published his first novel, "The Town and the City," though weiss did not yet know that he had written and published a book.Instead, weiss and Kerouac engaged in a "haiku dialogue," spending hours over a bottle of wine writing haiku back and forth to one another.Occasionally Neal Cassady would drop in and the three of them would drive off, adventuring outwards in California at dangerous speeds up dangerous hills, thriving on the excitement of the ride and one another's presence.