John Clellon Holmes

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John Clellon Holmes (1926–1988) was an American novelist, essayist, and poet. He is best remembered for Go (1952), a roman à clef chronicling his experiences with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady in New York City in the 1940s. Published five years before On the Road and distinguished by its emotional honesty, its meticulous attention to detail, and its lyrical evocation of the restlessness that defined post–World War II Manhattan, Go is widely considered to be the first Beat novel and one of the finest. Kerouac coined the term “beat generation” in a conversation with Holmes, who in turn introduced it to the world in a seminal article published in the November 16, 1952 issue of the New York Times Magazine: “This Is the Beat Generation.” Holmes’s other works include the novels Get Home Free (1964) and The Horn (1953), the latter of which was declared by the San Francisco Chronicle to be “the most successful novel about jazz that has ever been published;” the poetry volumes Dire Coasts (1988) and Night Music (1989); and Nothing More to Declare (1967), a collection of essays.