Book Review

Go 

by John Clellon Holmes

     In its time, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was called “the novel that defined a generation.” While it certainly was the most commercially successful of the Beat Generation novels, Go by John Clellon Holmes more properly deserves that designation.

     It may not be fair to compare the works of Kerouac to the small output of John Clellon Holmes but it is difficult not to. If the Beat Generation had not taken off as a cultural and literary phenomenon, then Holmes might very well have been forgotten. Go is now considered to be the first Beat Generation novel but it is significant for more than just being the first horse out of the gate. Kerouac’s purpose was to spontaneously express the lifestyle of the author as he and his friends spun wildly out of control. Holmes set out with a different task in mind though. Go is more of an attempt to introduce, portray, explain, analyze, and judge the Beat Generation as it grew into a scene in New York City.

     The main character of this story is Paul Hobbes, a writer working on his first novel. He decides to befriend Gene Pasternak and David Stofsky, representations of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg respectively, because he sees them as manifestations of a newly arising cultural impulse, the cutting edge of a new way of being American. Hobbes, actually a stand in for John Clellon Holmes himself, struggles to fit in with their lack of self-control. He also struggles in his marriage to Kathryn who has an affair with Pasternak, an affair that is given Hobbes’ blessing even though he appears to be hurt by it. At one point in the novel, Hobbes realizes he has to choose between being a part of the meaningless masses of society who seemingly do nothing but work and sleep like a horde of gelded horses or ally himself with the Beats. He chooses to go with the Beats but he sadly remains at the margins of their group and never clears out the clutter and confusion in his mind.

     Aside from Kathryn, Pasternak is the character with the closest relation to Hobbes though the two never seem to actually connect at a deep level. Pasternak is a sad man who drinks heavily, loves jazz, smokes a lot of grass, and has an easy time seducing women, especially if they are married. Stofsky is a poet, given to reading William Blake and having mystical visions; he sets off to help all his friends find the right path in life but instead he just annoys people and they often tell him to go away. Hart Kennedy is Holmes’ depiction of Neal Cassady; he hits the New York scene like a cyclone, always manic and permanently in the here-and-now without any sense of responsibility. After arriving from a roadtrip that started in Denver, the other Beats follow him around as he takes them from bar to bar, from party to party, establishing himself as the king of the group. During a fight with his eighteen year old wife, Diane, Kennedy is portrayed as being less than an ideal husband. Holmes almost makes him look like a monster rather than the portrayal as some holy prophet of individual freedom as he got from subsequent authors.

     Together with an extensive bunch of second-tier characters and subplots weaving in and out of the action, we get an idea of what it meant to be “Beat.” As Hobbes explains it, beat is meant as in beat up, beat down, beat tired, or beaten as opposed to winning. Therefore Go is quite a downer of a novel. On the surface, the characters pursue a life of never ending ecstasy but this is really a means of escaping from their inability to relate to other people or even to themselves. The post-World War II generation of youth feels restless and confused, full of anomie and unable to relate to the world. Go is a dark and brooding novel, full of frustration and urban angst, the language is nervous and melancholy while the scenes of social tension, arguments between lovers, drunken nights in shadowy apartments and muted conversations in shady dive bars depict a clique of young people who always seem to be on the brink of despair, if not plunging over the edge into self-annihilation. Holmes depicts the Beats as caught in a space between writers, artists and intellectuals on the one hand and thieves, criminals, and junkies on the other hand. The concepts of crazy and cool are central to the narrative, crazy being the state of manic euphoria, spontaneous expression, and living loose and out of control while cool means being aloof, cold, unemotional, deflated, exhausted after the psychological extremes of crazy have reached their peak

     Go provides u with an in-depth look at the New York City scene and it deserves to be read for that reason, The characters are well-drawn and portrayed with depth and an ambiguous sympathy. Holmes saw the good and the bad in every character. He also gave voice to a lot of the females in a way that no other Beat Generation writer ever did with the exception of a couple women authors associated with the movement (Diane DiPrima and Carolyn Cassidy deserve mention here). Go still has some serious flaws though. The pacing is irregular, moving in fits and starts, sometimes going so slowly it becomes hard to follow. The dialogue also tends to be melodramatic and reads like a counter-cultural soap opera at times, so much so that it is can be hard for the reader to avoid rolling their eyes.

     Overall though, Go puts the Beat Generation in a particular time and place. It situates the movement in a historical context and a specific social milieu. It says a lot about who the Beats were, what they were reacting to and why they lived the way they did. It should be the first Beat Generation novel anybody reads if they care to see what that whole thing was about. Sadly it remains obscure to this day. 

Holmes, John Clellon. Go. Plume Books/New American Library, New York and Scarborough, Ontario: 1980.