2002-10-13 Early days of 'The Beat Generation'

In Go, first published in the USA in 1952 and, in a cut-down version re-titled The Beat Boys, some five years later in England, John Clellon Holmes gives us an only slightly fictionalised picture of the key personalities of the 'beat generation'. Each chapter concentrates on different relationships and incidents, building up the detail as the interactions move from bar to bar and party to party. We get to see Kerouac, Ginsberg, and others as they strive to discover some sense and purpose amid their chaotic lives in the hectic Times Square area of New York City. Paul Hobbes, who represents the author, is one of the group, but he is always slightly set apart. His lack of complete emotional involvement even distorts his own relationships, particularly with his wife Kathryn, who just about tolerates his wild friends.

The writing is vivid, the observation is exact to the point of cruelty, and the distress of David Stofsky (Ginsberg) with his homosexual longings and his poetic visions, is portrayed almost with a sense of desperation. Casual sexual relationships, alcoholic excesses, drugs, and the need to live by night and sleep by day are not introduced merely as titillating stimuli to sell the book, but as real, frightening, and necessary to heighten and distort reality. Throughout the novel there is a pervading sense of a romanticised drive fighting a violent struggle with a grim realism. We are drawn into a world where intensity alone is the primary moral force, irrespective of the outcome...P>I first read The Beat Boys many years ago when I was about the same age as the author would have been when it was first published. Coming back to it after all these years I am surprised how fresh it seems. It is, of course, very much of its time, and might seem almost ridiculously intense to today's younger readers. Nevertheless I hope that some would find themselves feeling involved in this world where, however desperate it seemed, the participants were searching for a meaning in the void.