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Go: A Novel | John Clellon Holmes
2 posts | 2 read | 1 to read
The novel that introduced the world to the Beat Generation Published 5 years before On the Road, this candid and perceptive roman à clef chronicles the adventures of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady before they became literary icons. In dive bars and all-night diners, cabs racing across Manhattan and squalid apartments sticky with “tea” smoke, these would-be artists pursue the ecstatic experiences that shape their work and satisfy their restless desire to live beyond the limits of convention. At the heart of Go is Paul Hobbes, the alter ego of John Clellon Holmes. An aspiring novelist who shares the same creative interests as his friends, Paul frequently participates in their reckless, self-indulgent behavior. Yet his innate solemnness makes him an outsider, as does his commitment to his marriage. As Paul seeks to strike the right balance between experimentation and orthodoxy, freedom and obligation, he casts a discerning eye on his peers. The result is a thrilling and indispensible portrait of the Beat movement before it took America by storm.
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Go: A Novel | John Clellon Holmes
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"I think of you and me as the doomed lovers we never were. We walk in some autumn's continual rain in my dream, and grasp at one another, as though each moment was the moment of parting ... Each thing then becomes the last, and we wander down deserted streets, without touching, and are aliens wherever we go ... We come together rarely and then like two infected lovers in some contagious ruin, we lie down together only so that we might die warm."

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Go: A Novel | John Clellon Holmes
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Taking a Beat Gen literature class this semester, and this is one of our first reads. Already into it!