Pollard Memorial Library (Lowell)

Go, a novel, by John Clellon Holmes

eng

no index present

fiction

Go

38002921

by John Clellon Holmes

a novel

The novel that launched the beat generation's literary legacy describes the world of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neil Cassady. Drafted two months before Jack Kerouac began On The Road, Go is the first and most accurate chronicle of the private lives lived by the Beats before they became public figures. In honest, lucid fictional prose designed to capture the events, emotions, and essence of his experience among the Beats, Holmes describes an individualistic post--World War II New York where crime is celebrated, writing is revered, and parties, booze, discussions, drugs, and sex punctuate life. The most tentative and conservative of the Beats, Holmes's intelligent and sensitive voice also details the pressures and regrets that his lifestyle gave birth to. With portraits of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neil Cassady, William Burroughs, this first novel about the Beat Generation gives us a peek into what it meant to be a Beat before the term had ever been used