John Clellon Holmes, This Is the Beat Generation

Jimmy Fazzino (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Ed. by Christopher Hugh Gair, University of Glasgow
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication Nov 1952

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Essay / Lecture (literary)

Resources

John Clellon Holmes’s essay “This Is the Beat Generation” is credited with introducing the public to that term when it appeared in the Sunday edition of the New York Times on November 16, 1952. The twenty-six-year-old Holmes had just published his first novel, Go—widely regarded as the first “beat” novel—when he was commissioned by the Times to contribute an article describing the new cultural phenomenon he had written about in the novel. The result is but the first of many such accounts offered by Holmes and his peers, yet the 1952 Times article retains its status as an uniquely eloquent and prescient portrait and defense of the Beat Generation.

“This Is the Beat Generation” arrives a…

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1250 words

Citation: Fazzino, Jimmy. "This Is the Beat Generation". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 September 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33200, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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