Bill Cannastra

William "Bill" Cannastra (1922–1950) was a member of the early Beat Generation scene in New York. He was a "wild man" figure that the writers in the group found interesting, similar to their fascination with Neal Cassady. Characters based on Bill Cannastra were included in both the John Clellon Holmes novel Go (as "Agatson") and Jack Kerouac's Visions of Cody (as "Finistra"). He is also described in Allen Ginsberg's "Howl".

William Cannastra was one of two sons born to a wealthy, aristocratic mother and a machinist father who had emigrated from Italy. "The Cannastras lived on Schenectady's Pennsylvania Avenue, a tree-lined street in the shadows of the Mount Pleasant ballfields. Young Bill, who had the yearnings of a career in the art world, instead placated his parents by studying at Harvard Law School. In the summer of 1949, when he moved to New York City to further pursue his studies, Haverty went with him."

Bill Cannastra and Joan Haverty met at an artists' colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts when she was 19 years old. He was "vacationing as a scallop-boat fisherman", according to Haverty's memoir "Nobody's Wife" and biographical sketch in Women of the Beat Generation. It goes on to say, "She followed Bill to Manhattan at the end of the summer of 1949, and there she hung on to a precarious but happy existence, reveling in her seamstress job, window-peeping at night with Bill on the streets of New York ..."

According to Ellis Amburn: "Joan sometimes dressed in drag as a sailor and joined Cannastra in kinky games, peeping through windows."

The address of Cannastra's loft in Chelsea (now a parking lot) was 125 West 21st Street.

Bill Cannastra died on October 12, 1950 in a drunken stunt, wherein he was apparently trying to climb out of a subway car window just as it was pulling away from the platform and was decapitated. He was 28 years old.

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