Holmes, John Clellon

GO

New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952. First Printing. Hardcover. "GO deals with a group of young people whose lives are frenetic and even violent. Because they want passionately to believe in something and cannot find it, they create strange illusions to live by, and they are driven by a craving for excess. Their long nights involve liquor and marijuana, with the beat of bebop in the background, and they drift close to the fringes of the underworld. But these young people are neither callous nor criminal. They have talent, they seek belief; and they want to love." (from front flap) Offered here is a first edition, first printing (with "A" on copyright page) of what is considered among the very first published works about what would thereafter become known as the Beat Generation. Author John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) met & befriended Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg & especially Jack Kerouac during the late 1940s in NYC. This novel is based on his experiences with & observations of Cassady, Ginsberg, Kerouac & co., who appear as fictional characters with different names. On page 36, the character Pasternak, representing Kerouac, is quoted as saying: "You know, everyone I know is kind of furtive, kind of beat. They all go along the street like they were guilty of something, but didn't believe in guilt. I can spot them immediately! And it's happening all over the country, to everyone; a sort of revolution of the soul, I guess you'd call it!" Later during the year that this novel was first issued (1952), Holmes published an article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "This Is the Beat Generation," which began the process of popularizing that term as we've come to know it. All of this occurred before the publications of Ginsberg's Howl, Kerouac's On the Road & William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch would blindingly inaugurate the (often distorted & misunderstood) popular conception of the Beat Generation, whose original activities a decade earlier are depicted here. Holmes was known as the "Quiet Beat," his work here is that of a careful observer, not as innovative as that which those depicted would famously produce, but a pioneering precursor of it. A most important relic of the earliest public stirrings of the Beat Generation; an essential, canonical collectible. Book in relatively good-to-near-fine condition with mild wear, small bumps & slight loss of red cloth at edges & corners of front, back covers & spine; several small fade-spots to front cover; mild-to-moderate rubbing & browning to edges of text block esp. upper edge. Interior fine with very light browning at & near blank margins & edges of page leaves; very light, faint vertical creases at upper area of same. Unclipped original dust jacket in fair-to-good condition for such a fragile, vintage item with moderate rubbing, scratching, creasing & browning to front, back covers & spine; moderate-to-significant wear, chips, bumps & closed tears at all edges & corners of same; small area of upper spine with missing paper effecting only "H" in "Holmes"; much less paper loss at lower spine edges & corners; two small strips of browned repair tape & residue across lower spine extending to covers. good/ Near Fine / Fair/ Good. [Item #3326]

Price: $600.00