Go

Go is a semi-autobiographical novel by John Clellon Holmes. (Holmes referred to the book as a roman à clef.) It is considered to be the first novel depicting the beat generation. Set in New York, it concerns the lives of a collection of characters largely based on the friends Holmes used to hang around with in the 1940s and 1950s in Manhattan. An underworld of drug-fuelled parties, bars, clubs and free love is explored through the eyes of Paul Ho... more

Go is a semi-autobiographical novel by John Clellon Holmes. (Holmes referred to the book as a roman à clef.) It is considered to be the first novel depicting the beat generation. Set in New York, it concerns the lives of a collection of characters largely based on the friends Holmes used to hang around with in the 1940s and 1950s in Manhattan. An underworld of drug-fuelled parties, bars, clubs and free love is explored through the eyes of Paul Hobbes, Holmes' representation of himself in the novel. Hobbes is torn between joining his friends in their riotous existence and trying to maintain his relatively stable life and marriage to his wife Kathryn. Go concerns protagonist Paul Hobbes' struggle to maintain his marriage to his wife, Kathryn, while simultaneously indulging in the world of the 1940s and 1950s Beat Generation. It follows the complications of interpersonal relationships arising from a group of disillusioned and often eccentric young people. Hobbes finds himself in a world... less