John Clellon Holmes

Template:Refimprove

This article is about the 20th-century American Beat Generation poet and novelist. For the 20th-century American poet and Tufts University professor, see John Holmes (poet).

John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988). Courtesy Wikipedia.

John Clellon Holmes (March 12, 1926 - March 30, 1988) was an American poet, prose author, and academic, best known for his 1952 novel Go.

Life

Holmes was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Holmes was more an observer and documenter of beat characters like his friends Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg than one of them. He was often referred to as the "quiet Beat" and was one of Kerouac's closest friends.

He asked Ginsberg for "any and all information on your poetry and your visions" (shortly before Ginsberg's admission into 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 Jack Kerouac who told Holmes, "You know, this is really a beat generation." 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 (p.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. Considered the first "Beat" novel, Go depicted events in his life with Ginsberg, Cassady and Kerouac. Holmes also wrote what is considered the definitive jazz novel of the Beat Generation, The Horn.

Later in life, Holmes lectured at Yale University in 1959, at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1963, and at Brown University in 1971. From 1976 until his death from cancer in 1988, he was a professor at the University of Arkansas.

Publications

220

Poetry

• The Bowling Green Poems. California, PA: Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1977.
• Death Drag: Selected poems, 1948-1979. Pocatello, ID: Limberlost Press, 1979.
• Dire Coasts: Poems. Boise, ID: Limberlost Press, 1988.
• Night Music: Selected poems. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1989.

Novels

• Go. New York: Scribner, 1952.
  • published in UK as The Beat Boys. London: Harborough, 1959.
• The Horn: A novel. New York: Random House, 1958.
• Get Home Free. New York: Dutton, 1964.

Non-fiction

• "The Philosophy of the Beat Generation", Esquire 49:2 (February 1958).
• Nothing More to Declare. New York: Dutton, 1967.
• Visitor: Jack Kerouac in Old Saybrook. California, PA: Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, 1981.
• Arthur Winfield Knight & Kit Knight, Interior Geographies: An interview with John Clellon Holmes. New York: Literary Denim, 1981.
• Gone in October: Last reflections on Jack Kerouac. Hailey, ID: Limberlost Press, 1985.
• Displaced Person: The travel essays. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1987.
• Representative Men: The biographical essays. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1988.
• Passionate Opinions: The cultural essays. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1988.
• Remembering Jack Kerouac. Warwickshire, UK: Beat Scene Press, 2008.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

What Happened To Kerouac? (2 7) John Clellon Holmes Clip (1986)

• The Beat poets
• List of U.S. poets

References

• The Portable Beat Reader (edited by Ann Charters). New York: Penguin Books, 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)
• Collins, Ronald & Skover, David. Mania: The Story of the Outraged & Outrageous Lives that Launched a Cultural Revolution. Top-Five Books, 2013.

External links

Prose

• "This Is the Beat Generation," The New York Times, November 16, 1952.

Books

• John Clellon Holmes at Amazon.com
• John Clellon Holmes: Gallery of book covers

About

• John Clellan Holmes at Moondogged.
• John Clellon Holmes at The Beat Page.
• John Clellon Holmes in the Encyclopedia of Beat Literature.
• Holmes, John Clellan at American National Biography Online.
• Brother-Souls: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation reviewed at Beatdom

Etc.

• John Clellon Holmes: Papers at Kent State University