John Clellon Holmes, This Is the Beat Generation

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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 at a curious moment on the beat timeline. It predates canonical texts like Jack

1250 words

Citation: Fazzino, Jimmy. "This Is the Beat Generation". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 September 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33200, accessed 29 March 2024.]

33200 This Is the Beat Generation 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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