John Clellon Holmes (March 12, 1926,

Holyoke, Massachusetts Holyoke is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, that lies between the western bank of the Connecticut River and the Mount Tom Range. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,238. Located north of Springfield ...

– March 30, 1988,

Middletown, Connecticut Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settler ...

) was an American author, poet and professor, best known for his 1952 novel '' Go''. Considered the first " Beat" novel, ''Go'' depicted events in his life with his friends

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian a ...

Neal Cassady Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. He was prominently featured as himself in the "scroll" (first d ...

and Allen Ginsberg. He was often referred to as the "quiet Beat" and was one of Kerouac's closest friends. Holmes also wrote what is considered the definitive jazz novel of the

Beat Generation The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatio ...

, ''The Horn''.

Life and career

Holmes was more an observer and documenter of beat characters like Ginsberg, Cassady and Kerouac than one of them. He asked Ginsberg for "any and all information on your poetry and your visions," (shortly before Ginsberg's admission into the hospital) saying that "I am interested in knowing also anything you may wish to tell... about Neal, Huncke, Lucien in relation to you..." (referring to Herbert Huncke and Lucien Carr), to which Ginsberg replied with an 11-page letter detailing, as completely as he could, the nature of his "divine vision". The origin of the term ''beat'' being applied to a generation was conceived by

who told Holmes, "You know, this is really a

beat generation The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatio ...

." The term later became part of common parlance when Holmes published an article in '' The New York Times Magazine'' entitled "This Is the Beat Generation" on November 16, 1952 (pg.10). In the article, Holmes attributes the term to Kerouac, who had acquired the idea from Herbert Huncke. Holmes came to the conclusion that the values and ambitions of the Beat Generation were symbolic of something bigger, which was the inspiration for ''Go''. Later in life, Holmes taught at the University of Arkansas, lectured at Yale and gave workshops at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

. He died of cancer in 1988.

Bibliography

* '' Go'' (1952) * ''The Horn'' (1958) * ''The Philosophy of the Beat Generation'' (1958) * ''Get Home Free'' (1964) * ''Nothing More to Declare'' (1967) * ''The Bowling Green Poems'' (1977) * ''Death Drag: Selected Poems 1948–1979'' (1979) * ''Visitor: Jack Kerouac in Old Saybrook'' (1981) * ''Gone in October: Last Reflections on Jack Kerouac'' (1985) * ''Displaced Person: The Travel Essays'' (1987) * ''Representative Men: The Biographical Essays'' (1988) * ''Passionate Opinions: The Cultural Essays'' (1988) * ''Dire Coasts: Poems'' (1988) * ''Night Music: Selected Poems'' (1989)

Notes

References

*Charters, Ann (ed.). ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. (hc); (pbk) * Collins, Ronald & Skover, David. ''Mania: The Story of the Outraged & Outrageous Lives that Launched a Cultural Revolution'' (Top-Five Books, March 2013)

External links

John Clellon Holmes: Gallery of book covers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holmes, John Clellon 1926 births 1988 deaths 20th-century American novelists American male novelists Beat Generation writers Writers from Holyoke, Massachusetts 20th-century American male writers Novelists from Massachusetts